The Dead House, стр. 6
You read that right: “Two souls in one body.”
Mostly I think I’m broken. Error on lot “Johnson-K.” Issue recall immediately.
If I’m going to do that “honest” thing, I should tell you that I felt like I lost Carly the day she and Naida met, and partly that’s still true.
Naida stole my sister.
I’ve been trying to steal her back.
In any case, it all comes down to this one tragic fact: Carly is my whole entire world. She’s all I have left, my only tie—one of the three two last people who believe I’m real—and we’ve never even spoken. I had a tenuous enough grip on her as it was, and now Naida has part of that too. Except Naida has more. Naida has her laugh, her tears, her company during the daylight hours. Naida has her.
It’s not fair.
So, you see, when I saw Naida in the corridor, looking so relieved, I wanted to scream, “Carly’s mine!”
But she just nodded once to acknowledge me, then disappeared into her room next door, and the moment was lost. But maybe she got the message in my eyes, the way I get messages in hers.
I dream of her eyes, and their messages… they’re framed by the beautiful red that blood always is, whispering I’m sorry.
Something is going on in those eyes when she looks at me.
Later
Left Carly a note in the Message Book. I’ll do what has always been done: wait for her message like I have no life like I’m starving.
I have no real use.
I’m alone.
My time is my own.
For all my complaining, I have a good feeling about this year. I think maybe we’ll make it through without problems. So long as Dr. Lansing keeps eating the lies we tell her and never sees this book, we’ll be out of here come July.
Good-bye, Elmbridge. Good-bye, Naida.
Hello, world that invites the night.
Message Book Entry
Undated
Naida and I have been talking about London. She agrees with you about it being perfect for us. That or New York. New York never sleeps either, apparently. Naida was laughing that I didn’t know that. Found your sneaky Post-it on the bottom on my school shoe, by the way. You think you’re so clever. Well, not only are you not going to find my Post-it, but even if you do, you won’t be able to decode it. I can be smart too!
There’s a new kid in school. He’s not in any of my classes, but I’ve seen him around. He’s got dark hair, is sort of tall, dark eyes. It’s weird seeing a new student in our year. I mean, who changes school in the final year? So weird. Also, Mr. Thomas retired, and the new music teacher isn’t up to his standards. I forget her name. I hate it when things change.
By the way, watch your elbow. I grazed it in PE, but the nurse cleaned it out. Sorry, Kaybear.
Love you! I’ve left Heart of Darkness under the pillow. The new Internet code is NX74S1D. Don’t forget to clear the history if you go into the computer room.
Xoxoxo
Carly
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Friday, 3 September 2004, 12:52 am
Dorm
There’s a voice in my ear. His name is Aka Manah. I have never told Carly about him because—hello, crazy.
Sometimes I feel him scratching around in there, or whispering, on and on. I think he’s there to make me feel guilty for surviving when they didn’t. I think he’s here to make me feel as dead as they are.
I know it’s because of the drugs they give Carly. The Klonopin, the Xanax, and the risperidone. They screw with my mind and not hers—how cute. I know this, and yet I don’t. Because, drug-induced or not, his voice is real. As real as anything else in my life, I guess. And his words are true, even when they’re just screams that sound mechanical and broken. He feels, to me, like a ticking bomb.
When he’s not in my ear, he’s nearby. I can’t see him, but I can sense him. I can hear him. He likes to breathe. He likes to laugh under that breath, which smells moldy somehow. Like a towel left damp too long. But also hot—like burning ashes.
Tonight it’s the same. I can hear him sitting in the corner, watching me; his mechanical laughs stutter and bounce along the walls around me.
I just shrug and continue writing.
6 149 days until the incident
Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson
Monday, 6 September 2004, 3:00 am
Elmbridge Grounds
I like to stand outside the oldest part of the school—the real part of the school. I thought I’d show it to you, diary. Do you mind if I call you Dee? It suits you much better. Dee, then. I can just imagine what this house was in the 1910s. A garish palatial home deeply envied, full of damask silk, the finest velvet, marble floors, and chintz.
On and on it goes, solarium, library, billiard room (now seniors’ hall), gallery, the old banquet hall, the kitchens, old butcher’s kitchen, and a few newly built classrooms at the rear.
This—what used to be the original house before expansion started like crazy back in 1912 and later, when the separate wings were added for the dorms (they look like stupid L-shaped arms sticking out on either side, bent at the elbows)—is a mask. They bricked over the original stonework to force it to look more uniform. To match the stupid Oxbridge-style arm-wings they built on either side. This part of the school is me. A veneer. If you were to look at it from above, the school would look like a rudimentary bird. A body with its wings bending and turning at a ninety-degree angle. Like I said: arms with stupid elbows. I don’t get why they didn’t just make it a giant square, with a courtyard in the middle. Wouldn’t that be a better trap?
During the day, this main section is the hub and heart of the school. You can almost sense it beating. At night, though, it’s empty. Switched off and abandoned. God, this school is Carly and me. One thing during the day, another at night.
It may be a redbrick, Oxbridge imitation on the outside, but within the bowels lies something far older, something far grittier, all weathered gray stone, moss stains, and watermarks. Ugly. With the suggestion of something… not quite right. This part of the school feels vaguely sinister, or aware somehow. There are all kinds of rumors about this part of the school.
Let’s go round the side. They built two little alleys between the wings and the main house, like rabbit tunnels through the red, and near the back of the west alley are small dark windows low down on the ground. The basement windows. I nearly missed them, they’re so obscure.
Elmbridge is like a church in some ways, and in others, it’s like a mansion. Churchlike, in that it feels holy… no speaking over a whisper without a teacher shushing you, my dears. And that weird way you always suspect someone is watching. Even now, as I write, I feel like there is a face peering out at me from one of those windows, little hands pressed to the black glass.
I wave. Hello.
For a minute there, I thought I actually saw someone. A girl. A thin, grinning girl.
Mansionlike, in that you’re always sure that:
a) You’ll break something.
b) It’s haunted.
For me, it’s more like my place home. Couldn’t explain it even if I wanted to. I hate this place, and I love it. Like the anorexic who revolts at the thing that keeps her alive. I see myself mirrored here in the fakeness of it all. Carly is my mask, of course. She’s the “real” Johnson girl. I’m just the imposter girl of nowhere. Am I a parasite? I prefer to imagine that I’m carrying Carly, that she’s asleep on a hammock inside my mind, swaying gently with every step I take.