The Dead House - Kurtagich Dawn - Страница 16

(Screw you.) Yes. Is that all?

“We’ll be in touch again.”

(Goodie for me.) Uh-huh.

Automatically it’s me, right? Oh, yes, Officer, I unscrewed Mike’s forty-five-pound door and carried it out of the dorm on my back and then buried it in the graveyard Forgotten Garden, then proceeded to smash the bathroom mirror—all without anyone hearing a thing. Oh, right. I must have drugged everyone with the enormous amounts of nitrazepam they give me, which I secretly hide on the roof of my mouth, so they all slept right through it. Prick.

I’ll admit that it’s odd. Me, awake all night, and I didn’t hear anything either. I can see into his room from across the courtyard, so, really, I should have seen something. Then again, I try to avoid being in the dorm too much. It feels like Carly’s, not mine.

If I’m the accused, I want to see this for myself.

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Monday, 27 September 2004, 2:35 am

Attic

I went to check out the missing-door situation. I climbed in through Mike’s window, because he’s gone home now, and wandered around. It smelled like guy, and I don’t even know why. It just did. Instinctively, I knew that the musk in there was male, nothing more.

Much like Magpie House, the dorms in Juniper House are plain and boring, though interior decoration varies from most of the useless crap I see in the girls’ rooms. More posters, less jewelry (although still some), and more clothes in unlikely places (windowsill, sink, and trash can). I wondered if Ari’s room was like this. I could have found out… I thought about going to Pinewood Hall and looking into every window until I found his.

But I had to focus.

Apart from the missing door, which was kind of like a giant hole in a person’s face, the room looked normal. I inspected the hinges and found them intact, if missing the door. What would I feel like if I arrived to find my door missing, Dee?

The bathroom was another story.

At first, everything looked completely normal. The mirror looked perfect—new, even. I couldn’t believe how fast they’d replaced it, but I guess I wasn’t that surprised. Maybe it posed a health and safety risk. Maybe Elmbridge just didn’t want ugliness anywhere near it. I glanced at myself, for some reason put in mind of my reflection when I spied on Naida from out in the beech tree—how I thought I saw my reflection smile at me.

I frowned, pulling faces at myself, making sure that my reflection followed suit and in perfect time. For a minute, I was stupid enough to think that… maybe… if I looked really hard, I would see Carly in there, looking out at me. But it was just me, of course, and I felt like an idiot.

“Nothing,” I muttered, glancing around once. “How disappointing.”

I rolled my eyes and headed for the exit. As I got to the door, I turned back one last time—

The mirror was gone.

Utterly,

Completely,

Gone.

Not a mirror. Not my reflection looking back.

A yawning black hole.

I tried to scream, but I was frozen, locked in place by the sight of such… nothingness. My voice was gone, sucked into that dark expanse, which seemed to be inhaling. One giant, terrible breath. Pulling me closer. My heart skipped a beat, then thumped painfully, then raced like it was trying to escape.

I just kept thinking,

This isn’t real.

This can’t be real.

This isn’t real.

And then she was standing in the gulf, the girl I thought I’d seen at the basement window, grinning, her thin arm waving back and forth at me.

Hi there, she seemed to be saying, her long white teeth shocking in the black. So real. So fucking real.

I wanted so badly to scream, to run, to escape. But I was trapped there, my legs stuck.

Who is she?

The sink lay full of shards of glass… and they were bloody. The girl reached slowly through the black space, crisp and empty, and took a long shard of mirror. She grinned wider—how was it possible?—and slashed at her arms, flesh parting to reveal thick spaces of black nothing inside.

I stumbled back a step, my body weak and useless with shock, and I blinked—

And then she was gone. The black hole was now a chipboard, and not a shard of glass was in sight. My heart thumped once in my chest, paused, and then raced frenetically; my eyes couldn’t look away. Somewhere… very close yet also very far, something was laughing at me. Raucous roars of pulsing derision.

“This isn’t happening,” I whispered, but the chipboard seemed to be laughing as well, and I had the sense that it was becoming more and more real. More and more… present—mocking me.

I covered my mouth to hold back my scream, and then I ran from that bathroom, from that wing, and threw myself out the window, the whole time feeling as if something was right behind me, inches away from grabbing me, right on my heels. The laughter faded the farther I went, but I didn’t stop running until I got up here, safely to the attic, and to you, Dee.

I can’t stop shaking. What’s happening to me?

15 127 days until the incident

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Tuesday, 28 September 2004, 1:51 am

Attic

I think that Aka Manah is trying to make me believe I’m crazy.

5:00 am, Dorm

Went to the chapel tonight. Ari came a little after 2 am, and the moment I saw him, everything else faded away. I was fine. Isn’t it strange? How another human being can make the quiet seem less quiet, the unreal more real? Even when we sat there, doing nothing. Isn’t it astonishing? Isn’t it miraculous? I haven’t felt this way since the Viking in a while.

If I sat there with Ari for long enough, could the thing I saw—the not-mirror, the blood—be a nothing? Could I forget about it, brush it off?

Ari didn’t mention Carly tonight, so maybe they haven’t run into each other yet? I hope so. How could I explain it to him… Worse, how could I explain to Carly why I kept him to myself?

“Because you’ve been busy, and I needed someone.”

Too cruel?

Too cruel.

So I’ll keep him for myself, like the Viking. Except this time, I won’t waver. Maybe he can make me more real. Maybe he can make what I saw in the bathroom last night be forgotten.

I know what I saw.

Almost time to disappear. I wonder where I go.

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Wednesday, 29 September 2004, 3:00 am

Attic

I like to leave myself memento mori. I draw them in everything—hidden in textbook diagrams, in the grains of the wood on the wall, under my bed.

They make shit real. But not as real as the girl staring at me from the corner.

Is that you, Dee?

16

Recovered Message Book Entry

Wednesday, 29 September 2004, 4:40 am

Carly, where are you? Why haven’t you written? Are you angry with me?