She put her hands on her knees and gasped for breath, like an Olympic sprinter. Her head and neck were alive with pain, the aching so awful it throbbed through her jaw and the roots of her teeth. Saliva filled her mouth, and she spit on the ground, hoping she wouldn’t throw up. Garrett would drive back up Old Barrons Road; that meant he planned to either climb the fence or get in through the front gates if he could. The gates were sealed with Anthony Eden’s fancy new automatic lock, but Fiona had no illusions that Garrett, who was still fit at sixty, couldn’t climb a fence. Still, it would take him precious minutes. She had to use them.
She started across the field at a quick jog, her legs protesting. The wind blew hard, stinging her ears and her neck, and after a minute she wasn’t even surprised to see the detritus of mourning at her feet—the cheap flowers and handwritten notes she’d seen before. This isn’t her place, Lionel had said of the drive-in, but here in Idlewild—this was Mary’s place. This was where she walked. Fiona knew she was nearby the same way she knew that the crows were overhead and that Garrett Creel was on Old Barrons Road.
“I’m here,” she said to Mary Hand, and kept running.
Chapter 32
Barrons, Vermont
November 2014
It was easier to ignore the flowers and the cards this time. Easier to watch her boots scuffle through them and kick them aside as she made her way across the field. Now that she knew what Mary was. But the fear didn’t go away. We were all so horribly afraid, Sarah London had said, but Fiona understood now. That Sarah London had spent thirty years in this place, with this fear. That the girls had lived with it. That Sonia had lived with it, and yet she had come running back, fleeing her killer, dropping her suitcase in the trees. Just like Fiona was running back now.
This place, she thought. This place.
The garbage underfoot fell away and she passed the gymnasium, approaching the main building with its rows of teeth. Come back, it seemed to say to her, grinning in anticipation. Come back here as you always have. As you always do. As you always will, over and over. Come back. She ran toward it without question, drawn to its grinning face.
A backhoe was parked in the gravel in front of the main hall, and a pickup truck was parked next to it, but she saw no sign of workers. Whoever it was she had glimpsed before was gone. She shouted, but her voice was only a hoarse whisper, blown away by the wind. She’d seen vehicles here earlier, movement; she was sure of it. Where had they gone?
The big black front gates were locked; there was no sign of a security guard. Had Garrett already come and gone, finding no way in? How much time had passed? She had no idea, but when she heard a car’s engine approaching from the road, she decided not to chance it. She turned and ran to the front door of the main building, trying to call for help over and over.
The front door of the main hall was locked. Fiona stared at the keypad next to it, blinking stupidly, trying to remember the code she’d seen Anthony punch in. She’d watched him do it, watched his fingers move over the keys—if only she could remember. She pulled the memory dimly from her brain and punched in a number combination, her surprise muffled with pain when the light went green and the door clicked open.
She slipped inside, closing the door behind her. A car’s engine could be heard faintly outside, and she walked hurriedly across the high-ceilinged main hall, her boots scuffing on the dusty floor. Her breath frosted on the air, and there was no sound in here except a rustling in the rafters—birds or bats.
How did anyone ever learn in this place? she wondered as she walked to the bottom of the main staircase. She stared up at the balconies above, spinning away from the staircase like a wheel, and her head throbbed. She pictured Roberta Greene here, the young teenager with a braid down her back, wearing the Idlewild uniform from the photographs. Going up and down these stairs, textbooks under her arm, her head down. Wondering when she’d encounter the resident ghost. She’s an echo, Roberta had said.
Fiona put a foot on the bottom step, thinking to go upstairs and look for the work crews from the windows, but something stopped her. She turned.
A girl stood in the shadows of the west end of the hall, watching her. She was small and slight, her face in shadow. She wore a green-and-blue-plaid skirt and a white blouse. The Idlewild uniform.
Fiona’s breath stopped. She stood half-turned, her foot still on the step, as the wind blew outside and howled through a hole somewhere in the roof. Dead leaves rustled across the hall’s abandoned floor.
She looked at the girl’s uniform, her size, and even though she’d never seen a photograph, she suddenly knew.
“Sonia?” she said, her voice a hoarse croak.
The girl didn’t move.
Slowly, Fiona lifted her foot from the step and backed away from the staircase. She walked toward the girl.
“Sonia?” she said again.
As she got closer, she could see the girl’s face in the shadows. She had a high forehead, clear gray eyes, a small and straight nose. Lips that were narrow and well formed. A face long and heart-shaped, with a chin as clean as a sculpture’s, on a neck that was long and elegant. Her hair was mousy blond, thin and flat, shoulder length, pulled back from her forehead with bobby pins. An average-looking girl, with a quiet sweetness and dignity about her, who would someday grow up to be a pretty, strong-featured woman with wisdom in her eyes. Except that she wouldn’t, because she’d never make it past fifteen.
She was as real, in that moment, as if she was truly standing there. She watched Fiona come closer, her expression inscrutable, and then she turned and walked into the shadows.
She’s leading me, Fiona thought.
She followed. This was the same back corridor Anthony Eden had led her through on their tour, so long ago now. It led, Fiona remembered, to a back door to the common.
From behind her, she heard the front door rattle as someone tried to open it.
She moved quickly. Sonia was gone; maybe she had given the message she wanted to give. Fiona found the back door and pushed it open, just as she heard the front door rattle again far behind her. She slipped out onto the common and eased it closed behind her.
Where to now, Sonia?
The cold air hit her, and she shivered uncontrollably for a second, her body shaking inside her coat, her teeth chattering. Quiet, be quiet. Don’t make a noise. Sonia was on the far side of the common, walking toward a building Anthony hadn’t taken her to last time. She searched her mind for what he’d told her it was. The dorm.
She hurried across the quad after the girl, shaking away the persistent idea that this was madness. It didn’t feel like madness. Her throat hurt where Jamie’s father had tried to strangle her to death. As flakes of snow hit her hair and her eyelashes, that was what felt like madness. This felt sane.
Halfway across the common, she looked back. In one of the windows of the main building there was a silhouette watching her: a slim girl in a black dress, a veil over her face.
Mary Hand, Mary Hand, dead and buried under land . . .
Good Night Girl.
Fiona turned and ran faster.
The dorm building, unlike the others, was unlocked, for the simple reason that the front door was broken. It had been forced off its hinges at some point, the wood rotten, an unintelligible graffiti sign sprayed on the front. Since the restoration had begun, the door had been propped back in place, kept shut by a piece of wood nailed into it and across the doorframe. The wood of the frame was so rotted that Fiona pried the board from it easily, the wood splintering like butter beneath her hands.
She pushed the door open and walked into a building that had obviously been broken into at least once since the school had closed. Broken bottles, splintered glass, cigarette butts, and even worse garbage littered the floor. An old sleeping bag, crusted with something unspeakable, lay in the corner, shredded nearly to pieces by mice over the years. Charred marks on the floor spoke of at least one fire lit in here. Fiona was grateful when she saw Sonia’s shadow flit at the top of the stairs, and she quickly moved past it all and started up.
She was nearly at the top when she heard the gunfire.
It was so sudden that Fiona’s knees buckled, and she drooped clumsily on the stairwell, gripping the railing. There was one shot, then another, then two in quick succession. They came from somewhere close outside. The sharp cracks reverberated through her aching head, and she opened her mouth to scream, but nothing came from her tortured throat.
Her vision blurred for a minute, and when she realized the shots had stopped, she pulled herself upward again, her shoulders aching. There was no more sound from outside. Quiet, be quiet. Hide. She hadn’t known Garrett was armed. It was strange that he’d fired shots outside, and not at her. Maybe he was shooting at Mary.