The Evil Within Read Free Page A

funny, because it was us doing it. We all got makeovers at Macy’s, and then no one bought anything; we just skipped away in hysterics. We were awful. We were bitches. I didn’t care. I was with Jane.
    Heather never was with Jane, never could be; and maybe that was why I had been mean to her when Jane wanted me to be. When it first started happening, Heather would text me, or call me, and say, “This isn’t you. I know it’s not.”
    But she didn’t know me anymore.
    I shook my head again, unable to speak. Anything I said would just sound like more craziness. More attention-getting.
    We got home fast; it was Christmas Eve, and the streets were clearing.
    Heather jerked to a stop at the curb in front of my house. She didn’t say a word.
    “I want . . . ” I began, but I knew what that must sound like to her. Me, wanting. Like Jane, always wanting. Like Mandy and nearly every other girl at Marlwood. Endlessly needing more—so much so that they were willing to conspire with the dead to get it.
    “Listen,” I said, but that was about me again, me talking. So I reached over and touched her hand. “I’m sorry.”
    Her face broke, and her eyes welled. She exhaled, took another breath and started to say something. I swallowed hard, waiting; I could tell she was making a decision.
    “You aren’t the old Lindsay I used to know,” she said, giving her head a shake. I was stabbed through the heart: she was breaking off our friendship.
    “I am sorry,” I insisted.
    “I have to go.” She sounded defeated; she’d had hopes for our friendship, too, and she was letting go of them. Of us.
    I got out and watched her Corolla peel away. Panic rose inside me, as if she was taking my last chance of a normal life away with her. I had blown it. Badly.
    I opened the front door to darkness and immediately flicked on the lights in the foyer. There was the candy dish I had raided for the movie, half-empty now. Trudging down the hall, I made it to the family room and turned on those lights, too. The house was deserted; there was a note on the breakfast bar:
    Hi Baby,
    Gone to see Santa. Back by ten. Hope the movie was fun!
    Love,
    Daddy
    With my bag still over my shoulder, I crossed to the sliding glass door that led to the yard, stepped outside and turned on the porch light. I saw Casals, our tortoiseshell cat, named for the famous cellist Pablo Casals. He was slinking through the grass, stalking something, in a trajectory toward our black-bottom pool.
    Something white glittered on the water.
    No, I silently begged. Please, no.
    I thought it was over. I thought I was free.
    I thought she was gone.
    A deep, dark, soul-piercing iciness washed over my entire body, as if someone had just dropped me into the same frozen lake where Kiyoko Yamato had died; and I shuddered, hard. I staggered to the left, bumping one of our aluminum chaise lounges with my leg. It made a scraping noise that seemed to echo in my head, as if it were a far distance away, as if I weren’t standing right beside it.
    I lurched forward and confirmed the whiteness floating on the water. I gasped and went deadly still; and then I peered over the edge of the pool.
    I saw her. White oval, hollows in her cheeks, black, eyeless sockets. More a skull than a face.
    “Celia,” I croaked. Celia Reaves, who had died in a fire at Marlwood in 1889. The ghost who had possessed me at Marlwood, and who possessed me still. The reflection was proof. I could actually feel her shifting restlessly inside me, like layers of ice coating my bones, cracking and refreezing as I trembled. Just as I had experienced the fire that had killed her.
    “ I’m so sorry, Lindsay ,” she said, through my voice but not quite my voice, speaking aloud, through me. I couldn’t feel my lips moving, but the sound was definitely coming out of my mouth.
    “What have you done to me?” I demanded, bursting into tears.
    Her face rippled, as if someone had dropped something into the pool. “ I thought I