The Screaming Season Read Free

never, ever be afraid again.”
    I shook with fear as he floated closer. I was alone in the bed, unable to call for help.
    “I’ll make it all better,” he said again. “I’ll make it stop.”
    And in my hazy desperation, I was tempted to obey.
    “Ten , ” he prompted.
    Nine, I thought.
    And then I heard Celia screaming.

TWO
    “WRONG.”
    “You are so wrong, and so stupid,” Celia hissed as I shifted and twisted in my bed. I was sinking into the mattress. Something was wrapped around my neck. I couldn’t call out to Ms. Simonet; I couldn’t push the little button attached to the bed.
    “You have no idea what’s been going on out there while you hide.”
    She was pissed .
    “You know what you have to do. You know how to set me free. And instead, you lie in here . . . ” Darkness engulfed me. I was frozen to the bone; I could see nothing but blackness. I couldn’t touch anything. Smell anything. There was dirt in my mouth, and mixed in with it was something burnt.
    “This is where I lie. This is my soft bed and my pillow. And these are my visitors.”
    Razor-sharp pinpricks sliced my face as furry paws ran over my cheek and across my nose, down the center of my forehead to bite my cheek. Rats. I fought to move my arms or shake my head, but I could do nothing to protect myself. They kept biting and scurrying.
    My hair was coated with mud, and I couldn’t breathe. I had been buried alive.
    “It’s not even as good as a grave,” she said spitefully. “It’s a garbage heap, in the forest, on the road. It’s where I am. And it’s where you’ll be if you don’t help me. I swear it, Lindsay. You will end up here. For the rest of eternity. Awake. Aware. And suffering.”
    “Like me.”
    I finally managed to gasp, opening my mouth. My nostrils were clogged with dirt. Something wriggled against the roof of my mouth. I wanted to kick and scream, but I couldn’t move.
    Then she yanked me out of the dirt and down a lane. Smoke surrounded me. The black trees to my right bobbed as I passed, as thunder rumbled. Branches encrusted with jet-colored ice began to pump up and down as if heavy objects were tied to them.
    The forest is trying to grab me, I thought. I glazed over . . .
    . . . and saw phantoms sitting in the boughs of the trees: glowing blurs of girls in linen shifts, with skulls for faces and bones for arms, shrieking. They leaned toward me as I ran past, extending their arms, wailing and sobbing. From a tree on my left, a figure dangled from a noose around her neck, rocking back and forth, back and forth, like a bell. Her bony fingers grabbed at the rope. A crack shot through the darkness, and her neck broke.
    She screamed. Everyone was screaming.
    I was screaming.
    The trees began to thin, and the figures dropped from the trees like rotten fruit. The hanged girl vanished. Other girls appeared on either side of the road, standing in rows and banging on walls I couldn’t see. They were screaming; all around me; the world was nothing but one giant scream.
    The wind mixed up all the shrieks and I heard the desperation, the terror and fury. I heard them dying. White shapes, white figures; the mountain was alive with the ghosts of dead girls, enraged by their fate.
    The screams stretched into echoes. Clouds crossed the moon, throwing me into darkness as the girls glowed and winked out, reappeared, sizzled with white light. Their shifts disintegrated into tatters; their skull faces shattered; something of them became nothing more than a weak, shining mist in the darkness.
    But I kept screaming.
    “Stop it, Lindsay!” Ms. Simonet yelled. The lights flared on.
    Dream. Oh, God.
    “I’m sorry, sorry,” I managed, weeping. “Please, please.”
    She did something to my arm. It hurt.
    I slid down deeper.
    The screams came back.

THREE
    “FEELING BETTER?” Ms. Simonet asked me, trying to sound like she cared. She was checking on me in the shower room, where she had brought me to clean up.
    Maybe she knew I