The Dead House, стр. 41
I can smell her rank breath in my mouth.
She couldn’t be Carly.
Dee, I wish you could hold me.
Don’t touch me.
68 34 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Thursday, 30 December 2004, 3:45 am
Attic
I felt it, Dee—that thing people write about. That thing the girls laugh over in their rooms at night when I’m out in the cold looking in. That thing Carly’s teacher was talking about when they read Wuthering Heights last year. The burn—it really is a burn, Dee, somewhere in the solar plexus. Warm. Intolerable.
Can it be that love really does exist? Is it love? This fire in my stomach when he leaned over and touched my cheek? When he said, “You just vanished. I had no idea where you were until Naida came to tell me.” His eyes as they bored into mine, the desperate pressure of his hand on my face. “You were gone.”
His stupid bowler hat and the darkness in his eyes. The bend of his jaw, the line of his yielding lips as he leaned closer and—oh, God—kissed me. Is this love?
Please don’t think I’m stupid for crying right now, Dee, because I can’t help myself. I emailed him, and then went to the chapel after midnight, and he was there, and it was like seeing life again.
He came in with wide, urgent eyes, looking all around for me. I watched him for a moment as he strode down the aisle and checked the confessional. I was in the rafters, so I already felt as if I was flying. I was hiding—making sure that I wouldn’t be seen, like Naida said.
Then, because I had to see his face, I called to him. He was with me in a flash, hand on my cheek, hurting.
We were superior creatures, up there in the darkness while everyone else slept, so when he put his hand on mine, I felt our purposes—our existences—united in that moment. That contact.
His voice: “You were gone.”
He said the words and then he looked at me, and that fire began as soon as I saw his eyes flicker down my body. In that moment, when I knew he was looking at me in the way that men look at women and the fire lights them from inside, I became Kaitlyn Johnson. I was nothing before he noticed me, and everything is different now.
His mouth on mine, the texture of his tongue, the taste of him, his warmth in a world of such coldness—all of it felt like divinity. I wasn’t a ghost in that moment. I wasn’t nothing.
My life is different forever, Dee. I think I love him, and it doesn’t scare me. He is connected to me in this horrible life; he shares my every night, which I refuse to give up, because it means accepting that Carly is gone, as I almost did in Hell.
And maybe, just maybe, he is the reason I can stay in the dark. He is my new reason—the new reason I don’t jump out of this life.
Or, if I do, I can fly.
69 32 days until the incident
Naida Camera Footage
Saturday, 1 January 2005, 5:45 AM
Basement
Naida faces the group of Elmbridge students gathered in the gloomy basement: Brett, Scott, Ari, and Kaitlyn, sitting in the corner.
“Right,” she says. “I’ve asked you all here because you love Carly as much as I do, and you’ve come because you trust my judgment.” She pauses, her face panning slowly over them all.
“Not sure how much we should trust,” Scott mutters. “Sorry, babe, but you are aware that you’re helping someone who escaped from a mental hospital—someone, I might add, that the police are now looking for in connection to Juliet McClarin? No offense, Carly, love,” he adds. “But that detective bloke has already been asking me questions. I felt like a bloody criminal! Great bloody way to start the New Year.”
“This won’t be easy,” Naida says, “but all of you know I’m not crazy, right? And I would never lead you astray. So”—she takes a breath—“I hope you’ll believe me when I tell you that Carly Johnson is not in this room.”
Only Ari is unsurprised.
Brett glances at Kaitlyn in the corner. “This is a prank, right?”
“April’s a while off,” Scott adds.
“Forget it, Naida,” Kaitlyn says, getting to her feet. “This isn’t going to work. They don’t believe you.”
“Sit down,” Naida snaps. “Sit! We need our friends if we’re going to do this. Now, I know they’re not a bunch of cowards, and I know they’ve got our backs. We just have to explain a little. So.” She gestures. “Go ahead.”
Kaitlyn folds her arms and looks away. “I’m not a performing monkey in the circus.”
Brett and Scott glance from Naida to Kaitlyn and back again.
“It’s true,” Ari says eventually, getting to his feet to stand beside Kaitlyn.
“Well, of course you’d agree,” Scott snaps. “Everyone knows you’ve got a thing for Carly.”
Ari meets Scott’s eyes. “Her name is Kaitlyn. Not Carly. They’re… sisters.”
Brett frowns and glances at Kaitlyn with uncertainty. “Sisters. Twins?”
“Not in the conventional sense,” Kaitlyn says, smiling slowly at Ari. “We… we share the same body. Carly comes out during the day.” She swallows. “Used to. And I’m around at night.”
Scott scoffs.
“Scott,” Naida pleads, “I’ve known this about Carly and Kaitlyn for almost two years now. Do you think I’m lying?”
He throws up his hands. “Babe—”
“Well?”
“No, but I think she’s pulled the wool over your eyes.”
Naida throws up her hands in a mirroring gesture and growls.
“You know,” Brett says slowly, glancing at Kaitlyn tentatively, “she is very different at night.…”
Naida turns to Scott. “I need your help. I need you to believe this quickly, because Carly’s in some serious trouble. Life-and-death kind of trouble, only worse, because it’s her eternal soul in danger.”
Scott stares at her like she just sprouted feathers. “Naids, I dunno. It’s so… Jekyll and Hyde, you know? Are you sure she’s not just—”
“What? Crazy?”
Scott shrugs. “Well… yeah. Sorry.”
“Just listen, okay? We think an Olen—a Mala spirit of great power—has taken Carly.” She pauses, looking each of them in the eye. “Last year I initiated you guys into a Mala circle. I taught you and shared with you, remember that? Now I need you to believe me.”
“Excuse me?” Kaitlyn says softly.
“Last year I taught all of them a bit about Mala. I wanted to explore it a little more. Scott was curious, and so was Brett. Carly too. We formed a kind of Mala group.”
Kaitlyn looks as though she’s had the air knocked out of her. “Carly… was in a witch ring?”
“Just basic stuff. How to create a charm bag and a trick bag, simple things like that.” Naida turns back to the room. “But this is bigger than that. Like I said, Carly’s been stolen somehow. And I need your help.”
Scott frowns and, after a moment, as though sensing that Naida has reached some kind of limit, walks over and wraps her in his long arms.
“This is mental, I hope you know that. But… you’re stubborn as shit, so I guess I have no choice but to make sure you don’t get hurt. What do you need from us?”
Naida doesn’t reply right away, and before long, it is evident why. She is crying. He kisses the top of her head, nuzzling into her corkscrew curls.
“I need you to sneak Kaitlyn food and drink,” she manages, at last. “And bring her clothes from my wardrobe, bringing out the old ones. It’ll have to be on a rotation. Kaitlyn can’t be seen.”