The Evil Within (6 page)

After a few minutes, I heard a sharp crack, like a breaking branch. A chill scurried up and down my spine and I cocked my head, listening. Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea, going back alone. Maybe Marica and the other Grose girls were ready to go, and we could walk together. Or maybe they were behind me, hurrying to catch up.

I turned around—

—And I nearly ran straight into Mandy. And Lara. And Alis, lined up beside her, three abreast. They stood in shadow; I could only make out their silhouettes, standing very still.

“
Come to me, come to me, come to me, come to me,
” Mandy whispered. Then her head snapped back, and she exhaled slowly, almost as if she were dying. She straightened, and took a step toward me, into the moonlight. Her eyes were completely black, and the smile on her face was terrifying—crazy. Cruel.

And I knew she was Mandy no longer.

“Hello,
Celia
,” she said, in a voice that was not hers. Syrupy-sweet, with a Southern accent, and filled with deadly menace. I knew that voice—it was Belle Johnson, the ghost who blamed Celia for her death and the deaths of her five friends, in the fire of December 20, 1889. The same fire that had cut Celia’s life short. The fire that haunted me.

Nausea clenched my stomach. Acrid smoke seared my eyes. Flames crackled in my ears. I took a step back, into a stand of pine trees, and knocked the back of my head against a low-hanging limb. The impact rattled my skull and I grabbed onto a couple of branches to keep my balance.

“Julie,” I groaned, trying to call for help.

Hidden by the darkness, Lara . . . or whoever was possessing Lara . . . snorted. “No one’s coming this time, sweet bee. It’s just us.” Her new accent was pure New York.

“No,” I whispered fiercely. “Spider,” I called again, just a little louder, but far too softly for anyone but us to hear.

They began to walk toward me. I ducked underneath the pine branch, keeping my eyes on Mandy—on Belle.
Help me, Celia
, I thought, but if she was there, she was hiding. That was how she had come to me in the first place—to hide from Belle. It was all so crazy—how could a ghost hope to kill a ghost? But Mandy, when she was possessed, wanted to kill me.

My mouth moved but no more sound came out. I stepped backward and my foot slid into a hole. I lurched, grabbing the branch.

They came closer. I remembered that Troy had told me Mandy was afraid. Maybe she would help me here, now.

“Mandy,” I said. “Mandy listen to me. Make her leave.”

“Mandy, Mandy, Mandy,” Belle chanted in a singsong voice. “Oh, she’s a little whore, that one.”

“Lara, Alis,” I begged. “Please, help me.”

One of them laughed. The other was silent. Both of them moved toward me, slowly, like zombies.

I began to pant. I couldn’t make a sound, couldn’t run, couldn’t save myself. Then freezing cold swept though me hard, shocking me, like a jolt of electricity.

“Julie!” I screamed. My voice—
mine
—echoed off the lake. The flapping of wings buffeted the echo as startled birds took flight. “Julie! Spider!”

Mandy, Lara, and Alis kept coming.

For a moment, I stood rooted to the spot. Maybe they expected me to run away. It was my first impulse. Instead, something made me stand my ground; then, before I realized what I was doing, I ran hard into Mandy, barreling into her like a linebacker, and knocked her down. She fell hard on her back with a grunt.

Hit her
, said a voice inside me.
With your flashlight.

I bent at the waist, arced back my arm, and sucked in air through my teeth. And in that moment, the blackness in Mandy’s eyes vanished. And I knew I couldn’t do it.

I jumped away from her and crashed into Lara. Her eyes were normal. I pushed passed her to the shoreline, running so fast I couldn’t stop in time and sloshed into the freezing water. I gasped from the icy pain, swaying as I waved my hands. I remembered my flashlight and turned it on.

“Julie!” I yelled. I splashed backward onto the shoreline, aiming my flashlight at the lake as I half-ran, half-staggered back toward the lake house. “Julie! Spider!”

Soon a circle of light blossomed on the water. “Lindsay?” Julie bellowed behind the light.

“Please, come get me!” I shouted, looking over my shoulder as I ran. Alis and Lara were helping Mandy to her feet.

“No problem.” That was Spider.

My feet sizzled with cold. I fell and pushed myself back up. I couldn’t see Mandy, Alis, or Lara; the darkness had swallowed them. Run-walking, staggering along the curving shore, I reached the other two Lakewood rowboats, and squinted out at the lake, shifting my weight from one throbbing foot to the other as I watched for Julie’s flashlight, for their little boat. The cheery reggae had been replaced with a dark, ambient gothy drone. Shivering, I tried to ignore it as I listened for other, more dangerous sounds—the footfalls of Mandy, Lara, and Alis.

Suddenly, I had the sense that I was being watched—a prickling sensation between my shoulder blades—and I whirled around, passing my flashlight over the jagged porch. Shadows moved across the exterior wall. A board creaked.

“Hurry, Julie, hurry,” I whispered, even though I reminded myself that the lake house was crammed with partying students. There was safety in numbers—witnesses. Mandy wouldn’t try anything now.

“Lindsay,” Julie called. I saw her flashlight. “Here we come.”

I opened my mouth to answer as a figure stepped from the blackness of the porch. It was Miles Winters.
How long had he been standing there? Had he seen Mandy and the others go after me? There was no way he could have seen me push his sister . . . could he?
The burning tip of a cigarette flared orange as he inhaled, angling light into the hollows of his faintly-stubbled cheeks. He saw me and slowly took the cigarette from his mouth, exhaling, lowering his hand to his side. Smoke and breath mingled and rose around his angular face. His bleach blond hair almost glowed against the night. He didn’t speak. Neither did I.

Then he dropped the cigarette off the porch into the snow, turned, and walked back into the darkness.

January 8

I am drowning, they are holding me down, they are killing me. The ice pick burrows in; stop them if you love me, stop them.

My love is like a red, red rose. I love you, of course I do. Let me prove it to you:

The door is locked!

My hair is on fire!

IN MY antique Marlwood bed, I jerked awake and covered my mouth with both hands to stop my scream. Across the room, in the blessed, soft gray of early morning, Julie sighed gently and turned over. Panda, her little stuffed Corgi puppy—a Christmas present—fell off the mattress and landed with a soft
poof
on the cabbage-rose carpet that separated our beds.

I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly, forcing all the air out of my lungs, down into my abdomen, the way Dr. Yaeger had taught me. I was vibrating all over. Horrible, horrible dream . . . or was it a memory of Celia’s? Some of both? What had happened to her? What had really happened here, at Marlwood, that had caused so much rage and pain?

I had to know, and I wished I could ask Julie to help me find out. When Spider had rowed back for me, Julie had assumed I was afraid to walk back by myself, which was, in essence, true. And my sweet friend had wrapped me in her green Marlwood blanket and given me a hug. She didn’t know how afraid I really was, and I didn’t tell her. She was anxious about the lateness of the hour, and distracted by Spider; she didn’t know I was watching the shoreline, waiting to see if Mandy and the others would reappear.

After Spider had guided the boat to the NO TRESPASSING sign in the inlet behind Jessel, he tied it up and helped us both out. Then he and Julie lingered, and I knew he wanted to say good night to her in privacy. So I began the walk back to the dorm by myself, all my senses alert in case I was being watched . . . or stalked.

Julie hadn’t caught up until I was on Grose’s porch with my hand on the doorknob. She scooted up quietly behind me, startling me; and as I turned my head, I saw the figure in Mandy’s window again. As though it had never moved.

We had crept into our room and got ready for bed in record time. Julie giggled and whispered about how cute and sweet Spider was, while I remained silent. Then as we climbed in our respective beds, she added, “So, Mandy ditched me halfway through vacation. She and Miles went skiing. I’m not even sure if their parents went with them.”

I’d crossed my fingers that this meant Julie was no longer part of Mandy’s inner circle. That she was free. I’d envied her.

I still envied her, asleep with her mouth partly open, looking rosy and childlike and happy. I got out of bed and reached down to pick up her stuffed animal, and I felt icy coldness on the back of my neck. Celia. I whimpered in protest, imagining the ghost actually crawling into me, wearing me like a costume. I straightened, trying to sense if I was still just me, but I really couldn’t tell.

I nestled Panda on Julie’s pillow. Above Julie’s head, on the windowsill, the white ceramic head she had found last semester stared blankly at me. The brain was marked in sections with faded black paint, the way old butcher-shop prints used to delineate pieces of meat—leg of lamb, baby back ribs. Cerebellum, amygdala. The center for processing sensory perceptions, the seat of emotions.

The head watched me pace; I was overwhelmed with everything that had happened in the handful of hours I’d been back. I fought the impulse to grab it and throw it across the room.

I was going to die at Marlwood.

Tears welled, and I gave my head a stern shake. I couldn’t think like that. I was a survivor.

You had a nervous breakdown
, the head seemed to say.
Life . . . broke you. The weak perish

“Wrong,” I whispered. “I’m not weak. And I’m still standing.”

I tore off my rust-and-navy plaid pajama bottoms and maroon camisole and dressed in sweats, threw on my army jacket and high-tops, and blasted outside, into the dawn. I began to jog past the empty Academy Quad, watching my breath, trying to dilute the adrenaline in my system, picking up speed, pulling off the army jacket as I began to sweat. Without breaking stride, I wrapped the jacket around my waist. I didn’t know exactly what Celia had hoped to accomplish by dragging me back to the school. But whatever she’d assumed, we weren’t going to be able to pull it off. There were too many of them.

The wind buffeted against my chest, whispering in my ears.
Wrong
, it seemed to say.
You’re wrong.
Or maybe it was,
You’re gone.

Fog churned around my knees like ocean breakers, the white-water fringes of the tsunami of thick, wet mist tumbling from the mountaintops into the valley of our campus. Its coldness smeared my face like iced oil. I pulled my cell from the pocket of my jacket. No bars, but I could read the time. It was only 5:00 a.m. Technically, I was still breaking curfew.

It had been five in the morning the first time I saw Mandy standing at the edge of the lake, talking to herself—or so I’d thought. She’d been talking to Belle, the evil ghost who possessed her. Now I jogged there on purpose, as fast as I could, my teeth chattering from the cold, standing beside the NO TRESPASSING sign, gazing into the water at the white, eyeless face of Celia. Anyone passing by would assume I was staring at my own reflection. I experimentally touched my face, to make sure I still had skin, eyes. In the water, Celia did not touch hers.

“Make it stop. Tell me what to do.
Now
,” I ordered her. “I’m here. So let’s get it over with.”

“
Very well
,” Celia told me, in a voice that came out of my mouth, but was not mine. “
You must set a troubled spirit free.
”

Celia’s spirit
, I filled in. I knew this part.

“Okay,” I said, hearing myself talking to myself in two different voices. This was exactly what schizophrenia was, hearing voices, talking back. “Fine. But you have to tell me how.”

Her face drifted with the current . . . except that Searle Lake had no current. What made it move? The wind?

“
I know this will be shocking
,” she replied. “
But it’s the only way. If there were another . . .
” She went silent.

“Well, what is it?” I leaned farther over, and almost lost my balance.

“
I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to . . .
”

“Celia,” I said. “Come
on
. What is it?”

“
Can’t you guess?
” she asked me. “
You have to kill her.
”

My lips parted in shock. “Kill—”

“
Mandy Winters. Before she kills you
.”

IRAN.

As fast and as far as I could go, I fled the lake and lost myself on a tree-lined path. Kill Mandy? Kill another living human being?

“No,” I breathed. “No.”

But the coldness in me turned my blood to ice as I kept running. I could almost hear Celia hissing “
yes
,” in a voice like fire hitting the water.

“It won’t stop Belle,” I argued. “She’s a ghost. She’s dead. She’ll just find someone else to take over.”

Or was there something special about Mandy that Belle wouldn’t be able to find in another person? Was I that way, for Celia? If I died while she was possessing me, would
she
“die” for good?

I kept running, aware that I was going deeper into the forest and farther away from the dorms and the dining commons—the populated buildings. Still I ran, as if I could run away, even though the blacktop path seemed like just one more dead-end passageway in a maze, and I was a stupid, insignificant nobody who would never find her way out.

“Let me go, leave me alone,” I shouted, as I crashed through the bushes.

I flew until my side hurt, and my lungs burned, and my legs refused to go any further. I staggered sideways, catching my balance against a tree trunk, and tried to catch my breath. My surroundings were so dense with trees it still felt like night. It was freezing, and silent. Tears slid down my cheeks.

I won’t do it. I won’t.

I cried forever. I cried a lake full of tears, it seemed like. Then, when I thought I was done, I cried some more.

I turned around, gazing at the thick criss-crosses of branches barely visible in the gloom. One looked the same as the next. I started forward, nearly tripping over a huge rock that hadn’t been in my path before. Stepping to the right, I pushed against a branch, to find it lashed together with another branch, from another tree. Not the way I’d come through, either.

I moved to the left. Another rock I hadn’t encountered, and then a deep gulley. I made a quarter turn and took a few steps, but it didn’t feel right, either.

I was lost. Like Troy, who fell last semester in the woods . . .or was pushed.

“He was found, he was fine, ” I said aloud, over the jackhammer of my heartbeat. Snow sprinkled down like icy powdered sugar.

I hadn’t run very far. I would be found, too.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep
. The words sprang into my head, like an echo of my mother’s voice. Memmy and I had loved the poetry of Robert Frost, and we’d memorized many of his poems. We played duets together, me on cello, her on the piano. We did so much. Oh, God, I wouldn’t even be here at Marlwood if she had lived. If she had lived. If my life had not fallen apart; if she had been there . . .

Lovely, dark and deep.

“Memmy?” I whispered, crossing my arms and sliding my hands into my pits for warmth. If ghosts were people who hadn’t left, why not my mother? “Mom? Memmy?” I called.

Run.

I jerked as adrenaline gushed into my system. Then, in my path, there was a small, dark shape. It was like a bundle of shadow and I had almost stepped on it before I realized it was a little bird, dead, its left wing oddly angled. My stomach lurched.

Run
.

I bolted forward, not even seeing where I was going. A root caught the toe of my shoe and I fell forward, into a net of branches. One of the branches bowed back, then snapped into place, scratching me across the cheek. I shouted in surprise and pressed my hand over the wound, feeling wetness on my fingertips. I swayed for a second, then dropped to my knees and fell forward on my hands. Pine scent and wet earth rose around me like a sack closing over my head. But there was a light stream of sunshine shining onto the icy ground in front of me.

I took a deep breath and pushed up to get to my feet. I heard something moving through the underbrush. Something big. And stealthy. I remembered that Ms. Krige had warned me about mountain lions, and hysterical laughter threatened to bubble out. I imagined my obituary:
Lindsay Anne Cavanaugh, surrounded by evil ghosts, was eaten by a mountain lion.

I heard more rustling. Closer. My heart shot into overdrive. I was trembling. Without moving my head, I ticked my gaze left, right, searching for a weapon. Next to my right knee, weak sunlight glinted off a rock the size of my fist. About a yard in front of it was a broken branch with a sharp, pointy end. If I could stun it with the rock, then stab it with the branch . . .

What if I missed? What if all I did was enrage it?

I looked up at the nearest tree, a pine at least twenty feet tall. Could mountain lions climb trees? But the trunk wasn’t very thick, and I wasn’t sure if the branches would hold me.

I reached out my hand and grabbed the rock. Then I froze, wondering if I had made any noise; if I had just betrayed myself. I pushed against the ground with the rock, using it as leverage, while I stretched out to pick up the stick with my left hand. I closed my fist around it and yanked. It came free with a snap.

There was more rustling in the bushes. Very close, maybe three feet away. If a mountain lion sprang . . .

I caught my breath and held it. Contracting my stomach and pressing my chin to my chest, I pushed back until I was sitting back on my haunches. My sweatpants were soaked through with snow, and I was shaking so hard I wasn’t sure I’d be able to throw the rock, much less hit anything with it.

I licked my lips and brought my fist with the branch against my chest. The rock seemed the better weapon; I couldn’t imagine getting close enough to a wild animal to stab it.

I swayed, dizzy. I thought of my dad, and CJ and her little boys; I thought of Julie and Troy; and then, my mom.
Are you here, Memmy? Am I going to die now, and be with you?
I didn’t want to die. I would do anything . . .

Anything?

Directly to my right, the leaves on some bushes jittered. It smelled like Thanksgiving; the bushes were sage. I squeezed the rock and brought up my hand, silently weeping; no, I was wheezing. I sounded like I was dying.

I got ready to throw it—

—And from behind the trees, Miles Winters slowly rose to a standing position. He was wearing a pair of black sweatpants and a black hoodie sweatshirt with a plain gray T-shirt, and his white-blond hair hung loose around his chin, damp with sweat.

“You asshole!” I screamed. And I probably would have thrown the rock at him, if he hadn’t darted forward, grabbed my hand, and plucked it out of my fist, as he stared at me.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” he asked. I scrabbled to my feet, brandishing the stick. He blinked at it, and at me. “I heard shouting,” he said. “I came to help.”

I started to back away, stumbling on a low-lying bush; as I began to fall backward, he caught my forearm. His grip was very tight.

“Easy, princess.”

“Let go of me.” I jerked on my arm, and when he didn’t let go, I poked his hand with the stick, lightly.

“Ow,” he protested, but he didn’t release me. “What are you doing out here so early, little Red Riding Hood?” He touched my hair. Then his fingertip grazed my cheek. “That might leave a scar,” he said. “It’ll make you look edgy. Edgi
er
,” he added, checking me out, stem to stern. He smiled faintly. “Marlwood. How
did
they let you in?”

“What are
you
doing out here?” I was stung by his insinuation that I didn’t belong, even though I didn’t. “Detoxing?” It was stupid to bait him, but I couldn’t help it. That was one of my flaws, going for the sarcasm in times of stress.

“Detoxing? I suppose so. In my own special way. I’m shedding my skin, like a snake.” He examined my blood on his finger. “Listen, Lindsay Anne Cavanaugh,” he said. All the warmth and amusement vanished, and he glared at me with his cold, hard eyes. His grip on my arm tightened.

“I’m very protective of my family. I’m sure you look out for yours.” He narrowed his eyes. “Your dad. And stepmom. And your stepbrothers, Tom and Sam.”

So he knew the names of my stepbrothers, so what? I knew Julie had spent part of her vacation horseback riding with Mandy. I also knew that Miles had been released from rehab so he could spend Christmas at home. Julie probably talked about me. Maybe she even told them that I lived on the corner of wacko and high-strung.

“Don’t try to hurt one of us,” he said. “Don’t even think about it.”

I had a crazy moment where I thought he had overheard me talking to Celia at the lake. About killing Mandy. But if he had, I doubted he would have stood there in relative calm, trying to intimidate me . . . and succeeding so well.

“No worries,” I retorted.

His eyes narrowed. The hair on the back of my neck rose as he jutted his face toward mine. I could smell sour wine and cigarettes on his breath.

“You already
have
hurt her,” he said. “I’ll give you a chance to back off. Now.”

My cheek burned as if he had slapped me. “What are you talking about?” But I knew he was talking about Troy. About me being a boyfriend stealer.

“On your mark,” he said.

“
What?
”

“Get set.”

“Go to hell.” I jerked hard on my arm. To my surprise—and intense relief—he let go. With as much dignity as I could muster, I walked away from him, all senses on alert in the event that he decided to come after me after all. What if
he
had killed that bird? It didn’t look like an animal had gone after it. Its wing had looked . . . bent.

I kept walking, waiting for a parting shot, or some more patronizing laughter, or proof of his craziness, but there was silence. And I when I looked back over my shoulder . . .

. . . He had vanished.