The Evil Within (19 page)

February 14, 1889

“Celia Reaves, Celia Reaves
. . .
you wear your heart on your sleeve, Celia Reaves.”

David Abernathy kissed her. Newly out of surgical college, with his sandy hair parted down the middle and his rough chin stubble, a pensive look in his eyes, just three months at Marlwood and so beautiful in his frock coat and white surgical apron. She was about to learn, as she knelt beside his library desk and wrote in his journal, that he had discovered her name on Edwin Marlwood’s list of girls scheduled for the calming operation. But first he pulled the ribbons from her hair and kissed her on the center of her forehead. Then his hand moved toward the cameo at her neck, so fine and fair an object, the only memento she had of her life before this wretched place. Her father had come at her, and she had stopped him; and for daring to raise a hand against such an important man, they had exiled her to this hell.

She touched the cameo, suddenly shy and unsure. Smiling at her modesty, he reached into a drawer and pulled out a small velvet box. Opening the lid, he gazed at her with lovesick eyes.

“A token,” he whispered huskily, “of my feeling for you. Of my love.”

It was a golden locket, shaped like a heart. He took it out of the box, laid it across his palm, and pressed it open. There was a daguerreotype of him in one oval and lock of his hair in the other.

“Once we are free, you may wear it,” he murmured. “Until then . . . ” He closed the box and placed it back in the drawer.

And the strapping young physician reached for her. This time, she did not stay his hand.

“I love you and only you, Celia, my darling. Now listen, my girl, we must make a plan.”

“BELLE JOHNSON, Bella mia
,
Bella fortuna
.”

Fine young David Abernathy stole his hand down the opened bodice of Belle’s blouse. Beneath, the whalebone of her corset shaped her heaving bosom, and his fingers knew where every tingling nerve lay in the land of her soft skin. He braised her flesh with the fire of passion. He was her love, and her lover; and he had promised to take her away from this nightmarish asylum, this bedlam, this chamber of horrors.

“I will come for you and steal you away like a thief in the night. I will not let them have you. You are mine. We’ll be together soon. . . .”

“Promise me,” Belle moaned, clenching the locket he had given her, and was keeping safe for her, in his desk.

“I promise you. Now, come to me.”

“SING TO ME,”
Celia whispered, in the darkness beside the lake, where they rendezvoused.

“My love is like a red, red rose . . . Let me, my love. Love me.” He swung the locket, as if to mesmerize her. But she was hypnotized already, by serious blue eyes.

She put her arms around him. “Promise me.”

“I pledge you my word. Now . . . come to me.”

But his only promise was death.

And the flames rose, licking at my skin, her skin, the white-hot fire searing us. The pain, the awful pain . . . who locked the door?

I CAME BACK to myself.

It was like my dreams—or memories—had mingled with Mandy’s—or Belle’s. I didn’t know how else to explain it—except that I had been somewhere else, living in Belle and Celia’s time and place—experiencing things that Belle had seen and done, and hoped, and dreamed . . . Two girls, locked in so much yearning, and wanting . . . Did it make Belle go crazy? Had it dogged her relentlessly from beyond the grave?

Footfalls crunched in the snow, and I—Lindsay Cavanaugh—forced my eyes open. Miles Winters was staring down at me and Mandy both. My heart stopped. He could hurt me. No one would see. No one would know.

The wind ruffled his light blond hair as it whistled across the valley where Marlwood School squatted like a hunchback. But Miles was tall, towering over me, and there was something, some kind of energy, that I felt as he locked gazes with me. His eyes seemed to darken, like the stormy sky and he smiled, thinly, oddly.

Snow fluttered onto the crown of his bare head. His blond hair was disheveled. There was a scar on the right side of his jaw. I’d never noticed it before.

I heard my heartbeat thudding in my temples. I was afraid, but I was also . . . fascinated. I couldn’t explain it. I didn’t want to feel it. But I couldn’t break his hold on me. I couldn’t stop staring at Miles Winters, or feeling as if I had just received the most powerful shock of my life.

“Well, Lindsay,” he said, in a husky, low voice. He looked at me for one more long, measured beat, and I stiffened, sure that he was coming to some sort of decision about my fate. I still couldn’t move. It was as if he had hypnotized me.

Then he bent down, scooped his arms beneath Mandy’s neck and knees as if she weighed nothing, and straightened.

He cocked his head at me, and for a second he looked very, very sad. His full mouth drooped, and snow dotted his lashes as he blinked.

Then he turned and carried Mandy away.

The spell broken, I gasped as I picked myself up from the snow.

“He played them,” I said aloud, looking around me at the deserted woods. Played them and betrayed them. Promised them both his love if they would give him what he wanted. So did he kill them? Lock the door to be rid of both girls at once?

My heart was beating so hard I was afraid I was going to pass out again. It all made sense. Unfinished business. Terrible business. That was why a
dybbuk
had found a home in Mandy. If Belle had not killed for love, had she died for it—a love that was not returned? A false love?

I knew that kind of betrayal. I knew that kind of anger. The same thing had happened to me with Jane. But rather than deal with it, I had had a nervous breakdown. Whereas, in an attempt to deal with it face-on, Belle Johnson had wormed her way into Mandy Winter’s soul . . .

I shuddered, hard, so sad, so angry . . .

Come to me.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Come to me.

The ice pick. We were tied down. Deep into the center of our foreheads. She dunked me in the bath. She hated me.

He set us on fire.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Come to me.

Come to me.

I was shaking.

“God,” I whispered. “Celia, did he do it? Did he start that fire and lock them in?”

possessions: him

My love is like a red red rose
That’s newly sprung in June;
My love is like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.

As fair art thou, my bonnie lass,
So deep in love am I;
And I will love thee still, my dear,
Till a’ the seas gang dry.
Till a’ the seas gang dry, my dear,
And the rocks melt wi’ the sun:
And I will love thee still, my dear,
While the sands o’ life shall run.

And fare thee weel, my only love,
And fare thee weel a while!
And I will come again, my love,
Thou’ it were ten thousand mile.

—Robert Burns, “A Red, Red Rose”

I WAS RATTLED, and frightened, and I cried for a long time, but it wasn’t enough. Maybe grief was Celia’s unfinished business—that a guy she had loved so much had left her to die in that fire. Belle’s response was rage, and an unquenched need for revenge. Except Belle was venting her fury on the wrong person—a fellow victim. If I was right. If David Abernathy really was the one to blame.

I staggered back to Grose, and retrieved my cell phone out of my pocket. Both a text message and a voicemail had come through.

“Hey, it’s Troy. I found out some more stuff. Meet me tonight? Old library?”

Before I met up with Troy, I had to get through a day filled with question marks. Mandy was nowhere to be seen. And Miles—where had he gone, and had he been in the woods all along?

Julie was claiming to be under the weather, but I knew she didn’t want to face the world so soon after what had happened. Rose had a hangover, but she didn’t remember her possession. No one ever did, except me, and maybe Mandy.

Then I was summoned to a visit with Dr. Melton. I could barely drag myself to the admin building. Ms. Shelley was photocopying a flyer for the Valentine’s Day dance, featuring a pen-and-ink drawing of a laughing cupid being pelted with stars and hearts by three girls in Grecian robes. I pictured Mandy slow-dancing with Troy, and turned away. I wondered if anyone knew that Valentine’s Day was also my birthday. No more sweet sixteen. My mom used to say my face was heart-shaped because I’d gotten a kiss from Cupid, and that I was the best Valentine’s Day present she had ever received.

I wondered if there was a statue of Cupid in the god-and-goddess garden.

“Lindsay?” It was Dr. Melton.

He escorted me into his office. It was warm and inviting; there were Ansel Adams photographs of the redwoods on the walls, along with several framed diplomas. He had gone to Princeton. On his desk a miniature waterfall trickled water over polished gray stones. He had a fish tank, too. Dr. Yaeger had also had a fish tank. Maybe it was a thing with psychiatrists.

“Everything good?” he asked, as I settled into an oversized padded chair. My feet didn’t quite touch the carpeted floor. There was a vase of red roses on a bookshelf, probably silk, and I remembered the song David Abernathy had sung to the two girls who had died in a fire.

I nodded. “Super. Great.” I sounded too eager, and he looked penetratingly at me. “Except for right now,” I added, and he grinned.

“I will take my therapist hat off.” He pantomimed doing so, tossing his invisible hat across the room. But I knew therapists. They never stopped checking you out. Mental health-wise.

“I’m thinking we should look at universities that are attracted to free spirits,” he began, and I started. “Reed, Oberlin, places like that.”

I didn’t know those names. I hadn’t done any research on higher education; all I knew was that my mom went to UC San Diego and my dad graduated from the University of Maryland.

I was planning to ask him what he meant by “places like that.” Instead, I said in a rush, “Why did you talk to me about schizophrenia?”

He didn’t blink. “Did that bother you?”

“Yeah,” I retorted, as in
duh
. “You know I had a breakdown—”

“
Oh.
” He smiled and waved his hand. “No, no, no. I’m so sorry, Lindsay. I didn’t mean to give you the impression that I was referring to
you
.”

I met his “
oh”
and raised him one. In the ensuing silence, I replayed our original conversation. “You meant Shayna.”

He gave his head a discreet little shake.

My lips parted. I got it.

“
Kiyoko
?”

“I must honor patient confidentiality,” he said slowly, as if giving me time to catch up, in the event that I needed it. Basically, he was saying yes. Kiyoko had been schizophrenic. And he was telling me that why? To explain away anything she might have told me before she died? Did he
know
that the sordid past had possession of Dr. Ehrlenbach’s fancy rich-girl school?

And if so, would he fully enlighten me as to what precisely had occurred here?

“Let’s move on.” His tone was firm but pleasant. “Oberlin.”

OBERLIN
is fifty thousand dollars a year
, I thought, as I made my way to the old library after dinner.
Two hundred thousand for four years.

Now
that
was scary.

But I could no longer distract myself with thoughts of colleges. I was standing outside the library again. By the bluish light of the battery-operated lantern Troy had left for me in the hall, I knew he was already in the reading room.

I shook my head, unable to go inside. How was I supposed to take charge of my survival when I couldn’t even walk down the hall?

“Lindsay?” he called, unaware that he might summon the dead if he spoke aloud in a haunted house.

“Yeah,” I said. “Coming.”

I shut my eyes tightly and took a breath. Then I flicked on my flashlight and surveyed the doorway. I turned quickly around, staring at the waving trees, listening to the wind as it pinched my earlobes.

I tottered down the hall as if I were drunk, and turned into the reading room. Troy was kneeling on a blanket the he’d spread over a section of the carpet, and there were piles of rotting books all around him. They stank. Another lantern sat on a small stack of books that were in much better condition.

Troy smiled up at me and patted the blanket, gesturing for me to sit with him.

“Here’s the ledger book,” he said. “I have to warn you. It’s gruesome.”

I sat down on the blanket, and coldness seeped into my bones. I felt as if my spine and ribcage were made of ice cubes, strung together on brittle silver wires. Troy handed me the book. The cover was black and charred; he pulled a flashlight from his jacket, angling it downward as I carefully opened the burned cover with both hands and turned to the first page. It was dark, with a small light-colored square pasted in the middle. A lit candle was burning on top of a skull.

Semper Curatio
Ex Libris
David Abernathy, M.D.

“It means something like, “Always attentive. This book belongs to David Abernathy, M.D.”

“With a candle burning on top of a skull,” I said. Then I turned the page of the ledger book, or journal, or whatever it was.

“Oh my God,” I whispered. In a faded black-and-white photograph in an oval black cut-out frame, the eyes of Belle Johnson stared malevolently out at me. The fury in her expression took my breath away and I didn’t move, didn’t speak.

Then I turned to the next page. In tiny, elaborate handwriting, on a page with brittle, curled edges, was a list of girls’ names; it started at the top of the page and extended all the way to the bottom. My mouth dropped open.

“A hundred and twelve. I counted them.” Troy pointed to the topmost name. There was a date beside it: January 4, 1889. Different day, different year, same calendar month. Coincidence?

I dropped my gaze to the last seven names. There they—there
we
were:

Belle Johnson

Lydia Jenkins

Anna Gomez

Martha St. Pierre

Pearl Magnusen

Henrietta Fortescu

Celia Reaves

None of them had dates after their names.

I waited for a reaction from Celia, for something inside me to snap. None came. Trying to contain my dread, I began to turn the page. Troy put a hand over mine, and my skin tingled.

“I have to warn you, there are drawings and some old photographs. And I-I think that some of the girls in the pictures are dead. And others have been . . . butchered. Lindsay, you were right. Dr. David Abernathy performed lobotomies on the girls here at Marlwood. It’s creepy—you can’t find any evidence online or in the Marlwood or Lakewood archives. It’s Marlwood’s dark secret.”

Troy’s voice shook a little. I looked up at him. His expression was grim. “The operation didn’t always work. Especially at first. He had to practice. A lot.” He gestured to the book. “He treated them like lab specimens. Like experimental
things
whose brains he dissected.”

I studied their names. I traced
Celia Reaves
with my fingertip. Why was there no date? No date on any of the seven? Had they been spared?

I smelled smoke. I felt heat. I looked down at the book and saw the charred edges smoldering, glowing red embers releasing sparks that flared toward Troy’s chin. He was unaware of them . . . or else, I was imagining them.

Or Celia is making me see it?
I thought, as the coldness lay across the back of my neck. The pages curled in the flames as I leaped up, dropping the book on the ground. Then I moved away, crossing my arms, and turned my back. I began to shake so hard I was afraid I was going to throw up.

“Are you okay?” Troy asked me.

I shrugged, unsure how to answer. “It’s just . . . horrible.”

“It is,” he agreed. “First he drilled holes in their foreheads and dug around with knives . . . ”

I shut my eyes as the ground whirled around me.

“Later, he changed his method. He’d take an ice pick and a hammer . . . ”

Everything began to melt—the library in front of me, the sky, the trees . . . and Troy’s face. They bubbled into globules like wax, like soured milk, like a bad dream, a hallucination, like I was losing my mind.

“I did some research,” he went on, unaware of my panic. “There’s no information in any medical literature about lobotomies until around 1935. So he was just making it all up as he went along.”

“
Save me, David
,” Celia whispered inside me. “
For the love of God . . .
”

Troy fell silent. There was a beat. Then he said, “Lindsay? Did you just say something?”

Don’t. Stop it. Please
, I silently begged her.
Troy will help. Don’t scare him away.

My head throbbed.

“Linz, I’m sorry. I know it’s gross. I shouldn’t have shown it to you.”

Troy bent over me, draping himself around me as he tried to lift me to my feet. I was a mess, boneless, limp, in shock. Then, as he lifted me in his arms, I fought hard not to cling to him, and scream and scream and scream . . .

Instead, I kissed him. He kissed me back. He kept kissing me, too much, too long. We both wanted to move on to other things and I knew it; we were panting and clinging and pressing and touching; his hair was soft and his skin was warm and everywhere he touched me I felt alive again; and we began to go too far. I gasped, and he jerked away.

“I’m sorry,” he said, the perfect gentleman. The dimples on either side of his mouth deepened. “I didn’t mean to do that. I know you . . . ” He blushed and took my hand. “Things should be nicer than this, for you.”

He knows I’m a virgin
, I thought. I didn’t know how I felt about that. Embarrassed, I supposed. Very shy.