Chapter Twenty-One

To Haunt Us Again and Again

“We can’t go up there,” Victoria says.

There’s no real panic in her voice; she’s just stating a fact. And I know she’s speaking the truth. If we climb the stairs to the clock tower, there will be no other way down. But with a glance in each direction from the stairwell alcove, all I can see are the dead, white eyes of Saffy and the others closing in. All I can hear are the horrible clicking sounds of Annie’s bones, the dragging rope, and the wetness of Jess and Saffy’s footfalls on the hard floor as they creep ever closer to us.

“We could try to rush them,” I suggest.

“We managed against Annie,” Victoria says, the panic entering into her voice now, “but against three of those bitches? I’m not so sure.”

The shadows of our pursuers fall dark across the wall opposite the alcove.

We have to act now or they’ll be on us.

“I’m not so sure, either,” I admit.

Victoria bites her bottom lip. I can see from her expression that she knows we have no choice about where to run to next. We turn together and face the steps. They’re shrouded in gloom, with just a tiny sliver of light coming from the opening at the top of the stairs.

Scritch-scratch.

The sound comes from within the walls, and makes the hairs at the nape of my neck stand on end.

“Did you hear that?” Victoria asks.

“Yeah,” I reply.

“What the hell is that now?” she says, sounding as creeped out as I feel.

“It’s her,” I say, and Victoria’s sudden silence tells me that she knows who I’m talking about. “We have to move. Now, Victoria.”

We begin climbing, our footfalls echoing loudly in the confined space of the stairwell.

Scritch-scratch.

The stone steps beneath our feet are damp and slick. As we reach the halfway mark, I feel the next step crumble beneath my right foot and lose my balance. I stumble into Victoria and almost knock her over. She cries out, and we cleave to each other in the gloom for support.

“Sorry,” I say, “the damn step just crumbled away.”

Victoria takes a sharp intake of breath. “I don’t think it crumbled,” she says in a tense whisper. “It moved.”

“Moved?” I can’t quite get a handle on what she means, but then I look down and see it.

Scritch-scratch.

The bricks that form the steps are moving. Undulating, in the same way that soil moves when something is burrowing to the surface. And I know now that something is moving to the surface of the clock tower steps. Something cold. Something gray, and relentlessly malignant.

“Let’s go back?” Victoria says, panicking.

I glance back the way we came. I can see them, their white eyes in the darkness as they stumble and crawl up the steps after us.

“We can’t,” I say, hoping that Victoria won’t look back, but she does.

She screams, and the sharp sound in the claustrophobic confines of the stairwell is like a starter pistol that wills me to act against this new nightmare.

I grab her wrist and pull her with me as I push on up the stairs. Each one moves beneath my feet, willing me to fall and break my neck – and Victoria’s too.

Only three more steps to go now. I can see the light from the night sky bleeding out across the stone landing at the summit of the stairs.

Two more steps and I’ve broken into a run now. The less time my feet are on the steps, the better. I actually manage to use the insane movement of the bricks to my advantage. As I feel them move upward beneath my foot, I use that movement as a springboard to the next, and final, step.

“Last one!” I shout.

Victoria stumbles, but I dig in and just about manage to hold her upright, dragging her across the threshold and into the clock tower.

We fall, sprawling onto the cold stone floor. I unclasp my hand from Victoria’s wrist so that I can break my fall. She twists her body sideways to land beside me, the impact against the hard floor knocking the breath from her body in a last gasp. I feel a sharp stab of pain at my hip and I wonder why. I roll over onto my back and move my hand down to my pocket. The little music box is still there where I tucked it away earlier. No wonder it hurt when I fell; the thing is made of metal.

For a few moments there’s silence, save for our labored breathing. As we both catch our breath, I become aware of the wind that buffets the interior of the clock tower room as it blows through the open arched windows.

I clamber to my feet and help Victoria to hers. We both dust ourselves down, and Victoria inspects a raw-looking scrape on her knee. It looks sore. She must have caught it against the top step as she lost her footing. She spits on the fingertips of her right hand and rubs the spittle into the wound.

“Best antiseptic known to humankind,” she says after she realizes I’m watching her.

“Really?” I ask.

Victoria nods.

I have never heard this wisdom before. With all the bacteria swimming around in the human body, I find it difficult to believe that saliva isn’t going to achieve much else other than making her wound ten times worse. I’m about to say as much when I see a look of fresh terror on Victoria’s face.

The gray girl is with us in the clock tower.

She stands in one of the windowless alcoves, her tangled hair blowing forward over her face, teetering on the precipice. It’s just how I saw her in my dream, and I feel ever colder at the memory of it. Then I see the gray girl quiver slightly, and I realize that she’s sobbing.

I move through the wind, which whips at the ends of my hair, and Victoria reaches out to grab hold of my sleeve, intent on stopping me from taking another step.

“Emily! Don’t go near her! She’ll—”

Victoria’s voice falters. I look her in the eye and see pure fear embedded there.

“It’s okay,” I venture, wondering if I even sound convincing.

“Don’t—”

I pull away from Victoria and approach the gray girl.

As I walk slowly toward her, I retrieve the music box from my pocket and place it in the center of my palm. I hold it aloft so the girl can see it. It’s like a totem. An offering. I turn the handle slightly and the music box chimes. The gray girl’s entire body snaps to attention at the sound. She stops quivering, poised in the archway and as still as a statue.

“You don’t have to do it,” I tell her. “You don’t have to be angry anymore.”

I turn the handle slightly again, and the damaged little music box emits more chimes. The girl cocks her head to one side with all the animalistic curiosity of a bird of prey circling a scurrying morsel far below.

I clear my throat to speak again. And I try to focus on an image. The gray girl and the wall of the reformatory as one. The way she emerged from concrete and dust as a living, yet not living, thing. Her doomed birth’s only purpose to haunt us again and again.

“I think you’re trapped here,” I say, “for whatever reason, but you don’t have to be. We can all leave here together.”

I see a flash of something from behind her dark curtain of hair. Her eyes, twinkling in an echo of the exposed metal casing of the music box.

I keep moving toward her, peering at her and trying to discern any human expression in those eyes. The wind blows and parts her hair for just a second, and I see her eyes flash with a look of malevolence. And something else—

Recognition?

—and then she bares her stained teeth as her mouth forms a hateful snarl.

She leaps from the archway, right at me.

Victoria shrieks.

Still holding the music box out in front of me, I shield my eyes with my other hand. I hear her feet hit the stone floor. Hear her run the short distance it will take to attack me. The wind gusts around and into me, impossibly cold, and I wonder if it is the wind after all or her spectral force that chills me to my core. I feel her freezing hand swipe the music box from my hand. Hear it clatter to the floor. My face is blasted by a freezing tumult of wind that seems to pass right through me. I force my hand away from eyes, expecting to see her standing a hair’s breadth from my face—

But she’s gone.

Victoria stops shrieking.

I turn and see her crouching in unutterable horror on the floor. The gray girl stands over her, indomitable. The discarded music box rings out in one last discordant chime before falling silent. Pale hands emerge from the darkness and I see Saffy, Annie and Jess close in around Victoria. They latch on to her, their bony fingers digging deep. Annie laughs, a horrid guttural sound made all the more hideous by her twisted neck. Saffy drips fetid swimming pool water over Victoria as she entwines her fingers around her wrist. Jess grips the other in her blood-encrusted hands. Victoria screams, struggles and yells at them to let her go, to please stop, but they’re deaf to her pleas.

The gray girl nods at her undead foot soldiers and Saffy clamps a wet hand over Victoria’s mouth, turning her protests into a single, muffled cry for help. Victoria claws at the air, desperate, and I realize that Saffy is suffocating her.

But it’s their ringleader who poses the worst threat.

Victoria’s eyes open wider as the gray girl looms over her and then swoops down. She clamps her hands on either side of Victoria’s head, an eerie hissing sound emanating from between her foul teeth.

Victoria’s legs kick out on the stone floor spasmodically.

Saffy’s face contorts into a hideous grin of cruel pleasure. Her hand drips wet over Victoria’s mouth. I hear a disgusting gurgle come from Victoria’s throat and I wonder if Saffy is somehow drowning her where she is being held, pinioned by four spiteful phantoms.

I have to help her.

“No,” I say. “Leave her alone.”

But I don’t think they can even hear me through the intensity of their single-minded hate. And even if they could, they would pay no heed to me.

But maybe Victoria can.

If she can hear me through her fear, she might fight back. I know I did when we fought side by side in the corridor.

“No!” I shout.

And I see Victoria writhing against them. She manages to move her head, first to one side, then the other. She wriggles some more and breaks free of Saffy’s grasp for just a second. Then Victoria bites down, hard, on Saffy’s hand—

(Atta girl!)

—and, even in that limbo state between life and death, Saffy can apparently feel pain because she howls and withdraws her hand. The gray girl snaps her head around, looking over her shoulder at me, that sharp twinkle in her eyes describing pure hatred. But Victoria’s brave fight is all for nothing. The gray girl’s hands are still clamped firmly on either side of Victoria’s head.

“Leave me, Emily. Run!” Victoria says.

And then, with a muffled splash of liquid, Saffy clamps her other hand over Victoria’s mouth.

But somehow, despite this assault, Victoria keeps speaking.

“I’m dead already,” she says, her voice decisive and clear, “just like my case file says. I died in the gas explosion.”

I feel sick to my stomach when I realize that I’m hearing Victoria’s voice, but that it’s coming from the gray girl’s lips. It’s as though the mere contact of her hands is allowing her to be inside of Victoria’s head.

“I said you don’t have to do this anymore,” I say. “Stop now. Let her go and we can all go.”

The gray girl grins through dark strands of hair and then speaks again, in Victoria’s voice. “I killed my family, Emily. I’m…dead…already….”

I can see now that Victoria’s losing the fight. She can’t breathe. All the color drains from her face. Her legs flail beneath her, and then stop moving. I look at the quartet of phantoms holding her down. They’re abusing her with their spite, and draining her of life.

And I know what I must do.