The Dead Girls of Hysteria Hall

 

 

“Kind of,” my mother said. “My husband’s great-aunt recently passed away, and we’re going to her house.”

 

“Cordelia Piven,” I put in. “I was named after her.”

 

Abruptly, Tom stopped messing with the cash drawer. “Her house?”

 

“Yeah,” Janie said, picking a Ring Pop out of a box on the counter and adding it to the pile. “She died and left it to Delia. It’s so unfair. She didn’t leave me anything.”

 

Tom seemed to know that I was Delia, and he set his gaze squarely on me. “You been up there before?”

 

“To the house?” Mom answered. “No.”

 

“We couldn’t even see it online,” I said. “The satellite image was all cloudy.”

 

Pretty frustrating, actually. To inherit a house from one’s old great-great-aunt and not even be able to see what it looked like. The picture in my head had come to resemble a little cottage full of overstuffed floral chairs and ceramic cats (or possibly actual cats).

 

I’d never met Aunt Cordelia in person, but still, her death had made me a little sad. Back when I was in the sixth grade, she and I had exchanged a series of pen-pal letters for one of my school assignments. We’d long since fallen out of touch, but our brief correspondence had given me a sense of connection with her.

 

When Mom and Dad had shared the news that she’d passed away and left me everything she owned, I had gone back and looked over her letters. She seemed like a nice old lady, always overflowing with excitement about the tidbits of my life I’d sent her (of course, that could have been nice-old-lady manners). But there was nothing that indicated she felt some deep bond—certainly nothing to suggest that she might someday blow right by my dad’s possible claim to his family’s property and bestow the entire cat-and-crocheted-blanket-filled house on me, a sixteen-year-old.

 

I suggested we all go to the funeral, but Mom and Dad said there wasn’t going to be one. Which was pretty sad in itself, I guess.

 

“Oh,” Tom said now. “There’s plenty to see. Where are you all staying?”

 

Mom and I exchanged a glance. “At the house,” she said.

 

Tom’s jaw dropped. “You’re staying at Hysteria Hall?”

 

“Where?” I asked.

 

Just then, Dad plopped his bags of cashews and roasted almonds on the counter.

 

“Did you say Hysteria Hall?” Mom asked.

 

“I don’t mean any disrespect,” Tom said. “But that’s what folks call it, on account of the … ah … the women.”

 

“The women? Brad, have you heard this?” Mom asked.

 

I sensed a change in my father’s energy—a sudden rigidity in his posture. “We should get back on the road, Lisa,” he said. Dad, for his part, had a way of making authoritative pronouncements as if we were all his royal subjects. Probably from being treated like a minor god-figure by his eager-beaver students. (Sadly, when your parents are professors, college loses a lot of its mystique.)

 

“But what does it mean?” Mom stared at the counter, as if the answer might lie in the Pick Six lotto tickets displayed under the glass.

 

“Well, people kind of forgot about the place for a long time,” Tom said, sounding apologetic. “But now they’re all talking about it again because of how she died.”

 

“And what does that mean?” my mother asked Tom. “How did she die?”

 

“It’s starting to get dark,” Dad announced. “There’s supposed to be a storm this evening.”

 

“Wouldn’t you like to know, Brad?” Mom turned to him. “I just assumed she passed away peacefully in bed or something. The lawyers never said anything, come to think about it.”

 

“I’d definitely like to know,” I said.

 

When I spoke, my parents realized that Janie and I were listening to every word of the conversation.

 

Dad glanced from my little sister to me and then handed his credit card over the counter. Tom swiped it and passed it back.

 

“They did, actually,” Dad said to Mom, a tight smile on his lips. “And we can talk about it later.” He grabbed all the bags and started for the door.

 

“Have a nice day,” Tom called as the door closed behind us.

 

As we settled back into the car, I sent what I figured might be my last text to Nic in a long time:

 

HEADING INTO ROTBURG. PARENTS ACTING WEIRD AS USUAL. JANIE WON’T STOP SINGING BOY BAND SONGS.

 

I watched it send, and then I added one final message:

 

JUST KILL ME NOW.

 

 

 

 

 

OBSERVATIONS MADE AFTER THE FACT

 

 

Things weren’t always bad with my parents. For a lot of my life, we actually got along great. I was a huge nerd, they were huge nerds … I was the daughter they could relate to, whereas Janie was this beautiful blond creature who moved among us like a Barbie doll among Star Trek figurines.