The Dead House

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.

But that’s crap, because during the day, I’m nothing. I don’t exist. So neither does she, at night.

I’ll never tell Carly how jealous I am that she gets to walk inside every single day while I’m stuck outside at nighttime, looking at the shell.

I don’t want to think about it. I don’t want to be outside anymore.

I’m going in.


Ha! Try to keep me out, and I’ll break in! Oh, I feel wonderful! It’s just like the old days, back in Chester with John.

You won’t believe what I found!

I broke in through one of those smudged-up dark windows of the basement where I felt saw? something someone watching me earlier. I only just fit. What will they do when they notice the broken window? Whatever, I don’t care! I’m invisible!

The cellar basement was


[A page has been torn from the diary.]



The top floor was where I made the real find. I was about to head back to the basement and return to the dorm when I spotted an unobtrusive black door in one of the long halls, right next to a tall grandfather clock.

It didn’t look like a closet.

It didn’t look like a bathroom.

It looked like a secret.

The attic, Dee, is so vast—one long, seemingly endless room. It’s full of boxes that contain glass ink pots, silver-nibbed dip pens—nibs!—notebooks, and antiquated textbooks. Stuff that is decades older than the things stored in the basement. I found a girl’s guide to etiquette, if you can believe that. Could I need anything less?

I could spend months up here, looking at every little thing. This might be a nice place for me. Hidden. Forgotten. Perfect.



4:34 am, Roof

Dee, I’m a bit of a spy. What else is there to do when everyone else is sleeping and you’re bored? I said I’d behave, and to get out of here, it’s the least I’d do.

Escapism is a window that I don’t have, but I need movement. I can’t sit still.

I have this horrible fear of turning to stone like I’m in an Anne Rice novel or something. Or that I’ll vanish, fade like a ghost. Cease to be. Then I won’t be anything, just like Lansing wants. And the thought of that, Dee, is enough to drive me up onto the roof, where I teeter on the edge and wonder why I don’t just leap.