Page 48 of She Haunts Me Still
And with the slightest tilt of Saskia’s nod, it’s as though the floor has ripped open beneath Mallory’s feet, creating a chasm with a million new questions.
But then Saskia says something else. And Mallory’s world shifts again.
“I’ve been scared of her,” Saskia whispers, “my entire life.”
12
Mallory slams the door of the library’s archival room shut, sealing her and Saskia inside a frame of dusty shelves. After rehearsal ended, she barely had to convince Saskia to come with her, as if what happened beneath the flickering bathroom lights had broken some kind of invisible barrier between them.
“I thought we were going to chat in your dorm or something,” Saskia says, tugging the chain on a banker’s lamp to illuminate the cramped space.
Mallory drops her bag on a rounded oak table with a hollowthunk. “Don’t you want answers? We can talk while we investigate. The archives room is only open for another hour.”
“Talk first,” Saskia says, grabbing Mallory’s wrist. “My head isspinning. My entire life, I thought there was something wrong with me, seeing things no one else sees, hearing voices no one else hears. And somehow you’re the same? And webothgot letters inviting us to apply early to Shore? What the fuck is going on?”
“I have the same questions,” Mallory says, gaze faltering momentarily to where Saskia’s fingers are clasped around herwrist. Her short nails are painted navy, and there’s a swirling turquoise mood ring on her middle finger.
Withdrawing her hand, Saskia slumps into one of the plush maroon chairs. “Alright.” She blows a loose strand of hair away from her face. “Let’s start at the beginning, then. Tell me what you know.”
Mallory sinks into the other chair, black pleated skirt blooming around her thighs. She fidgets with the rosary beads, wishing she had her mother’s locket instead as she prepares to share her worst secrets with another stranger.
But she lets it all out anyway. The nightmares at the blue house. The corpse of a woman named Lily in mirrors and windows. Her mother’s suicide. Everything she’s learned in the past few days. Lily’s grave. The sanitarium. Rhode Island’s Vampire Panic. Through it all, Saskia holds her stare, her expression shifting from curiosity to shock to, finally, fear.
“What I’m stuck on,” Mallory says, “is why me? Why my mother? It can’t be a coincidence that Lily’s heart was removed and my mother died by stabbing herself in the same place. Lily basicallytoldme I’d be next. Is it because my family has attended Shore since it was founded, just years after Lily was buried and dismembered on these grounds? There are other legacy families out there. Why targetmine?”
Saskia skews her mouth to the side, considering. “Did any other relatives experience this, besides your mother? Is your—sorry, I guess we’re getting personal here. Is your dad around?”
“No.” Mallory shakes her head. “I don’t know anything about him, other than he loved my mom. But she wanted to raise me on her own.” She pauses. “I think it’s because she knew what would happen to her. I’ve been fighting thisclaustrophobic feeling lately, like I’m running out of time. Maybe she felt the same thing because of Lily and didn’t want him to have to lose her.” She glances down. “But me losing her was inevitable. I never understood why she didn’t send me to live with him, after. Then again, maybe she tried. Maybe it washimwho didn’t want me. Didn’t want the reminder of what he’d lost.”
Saskia is quiet a moment. “I’m sorry about your mom. Is your grandmother still alive?”
“She died when my mother was young.”
“Really?” Saskia’s eyebrows lift. “How did she die?”
Mallory fiddles with the ends of her hair, the question sparking a flame of embarrassment as she realizes she doesn’t have the answer.
“I-I’m not sure.” She reaches for her phone. “Maybe my aunt knows. Well, she’s notreallymy aunt—she’s my guardian—but still. She was close with my mom.”
Saskia leans back as Mallory types out a message. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Of course,” Mallory replies, tucking her phone away.
“I know you were little, so maybe it’s hard to say,” she starts, “but in the weeks before your mom died…were there any warning signs? In retrospect, you know.”
Mallory swallows. Her thoughts skip over faded memories of twinkling December lights, her mother’s laughter in the snow. But the images darken, conjuring her mother’s pale skin, shadows beneath her eyes like she hadn’t slept in days, the stale smell of the too-full ashtray in the living room. The fragments of her undoing she tried so desperately to hide.
“I didn’t understand it at the time,” Mallory answers, “but I think there were signs. I would hear her in the night,sweeping the kitchen. Vacuuming the living room.” Mallory picks at a thread on her skirt. “Toward the end, she took down all the mirrors. Like she was afraid of her reflection. She used to have friends who would come over. Book club. Tea. Dinners. Eventually, most of them stopped visiting.” She shakes her head. “I think Lily wore my mother down. Isolated her. And thenmadeher stab herself.”
Saskia considers this. “If you’ve been having visions of the same thing happening to you…what if it also happened to the other Shore alumni in your family?”
“Like a genetic thing?”
“More like a curse.”
Mallory falls quiet, fingering the rosary beads again. Acurse. The word sounds silly and childish, like one of the fairy tales her mother would tell her beneath the glow of her play tent. She has free will, control over her own body. She’d never pick up a knife and turn it on herself. Would never slot the tip against her sternum, eyes milky and unfocused. Mallory’s entire body tenses at the thought, the way the images take hold so viscerally in her mind. She can practically feel the weight of the knife’s handle, can hear the whispering shadows that would gather as she pushed the blade straight through. Lulling her into the final role she’s always been meant to play: a lifeless girl with a missing heart.
If ghosts are real, she thinks in defeat, perhaps curses are, too. Maybe she’s just a puppet, destiny-tied to something monstrous and unseen.
