Be Not Afraid (15 page)

I shook my head. “I don’t get it.”

“Cassie read it wrong. She must’ve thought it said
conjuring
, which means to summon, right? To call on someone? Conjoining is a whole other word.”

“That means to bring together,” I finished. “To make as one.”

Now we wait? My blood ran cold at Cassie’s words. Wait for what? I sidled a glance to the right of me and then to the left, hoping Cassie didn’t notice. Was something going to come rushing out from behind another panel? Some wild animal or … Panic filled my chest, and I held my breath, trying to suppress it. Okay. All right. What had she said this was? A game, right? It was just a game. Nothing was going to
happen.
Nothing
could
happen. We were just two teenage girls from Connecticut in the good old United States
of America, sitting in a closet. Yes, one of us had muttered some strange words in an attempt to lead some kind of “ritual,” and sure there were candles burning on an altar across the room, but nothing was actually going to come of anything. We weren’t witches, for God’s sake. This wasn’t Salem.

I could do this. I could “wait” with Cassie until nothing happened and we had no choice but to leave. She would be disappointed no doubt, and maybe even take her frustration out on me, but I could bear anything now as long as it meant we were getting out of this room. I crossed my legs and leaned back against the red drapes, trying to steady my breathing. My heart knocked against my rib cage like something trying to get out, and my bladder was uncomfortably full. In our hands, the candles flickered to and fro, the flames dancing like pale scarves in the darkness. I closed my eyes and then opened them again as something shifted behind them.

Cassie’s eyes were still closed, but the flame on her candle had extinguished itself. My eyes widened as I stared at the trail of smoke drifting toward the ceiling. The room smelled like something burning; the air was thick with heat. Had she just blown her candle out while my eyes were shut? Was she trying to scare me even more? Maybe it was the lack of oxygen in the room, the absence of fresh air. I sat frozen, the only light in the room now coming from my candle, which swayed back and forth, delicate as seaweed. A small egg-shaped shadow loomed on the floor, growing
wider at the bottom and then narrowing again. My flame flickered. Once. Twice. Three times it sputtered, as if trying to make up its mind, and then it, too, went out.

The room plunged into darkness, a horrible blackness that settled over the top of my bare arms like a skin, smothering the front of my face. I heard a noise, a dull thumping sound as if something had hit the wall or the floor, but I couldn’t see Cassie at all; the blackness had swallowed her up. I reached out with two hands, moving them throughout the inky space, until my fingers bumped into the side of Cassie’s leg.

“Cassie?” I whispered, still feeling around with my hands.

She was on her back, flat on the floor, but she didn’t move. In fact, I couldn’t even be sure she was breathing.

A faint clicking noise sounded in the corner. I paused, my trembling fingers hovering midair, and listened. A strange heaviness seemed to descend over the top of me, as if the space around me had just been filled with a dense air. We weren’t alone anymore. Someone—or something—else had entered the room. A movement, light as a breeze, brushed against my shoulder, and I whirled, staring into darkness. The faintest sound of breathing drifted out from a corner on the other side of the room, and the unmistakable knowledge that I was being gazed upon settled like a stone inside my chest.

I began to scream, groping around the room like an animal and flailing my arms and legs. I tripped over Cassie, who gasped once, as if she had been holding her breath, and
then began to pant, her breath coming in short, shallow bursts. I screamed again, pulling at her T-shirt, shrieking her name. “Cassie, get up! Get up!” She lay inert, oblivious to my prodding, and jerked her head to the right. If not for the sudden movement and the panting noises coming out of her mouth, I might have thought she was dead. Maybe she was dying. Maybe something really had happened, and she was breathing her last breaths.

My scalp prickled as the faint sound of fingernails—or were they claws?—emerged from the opposite corner. I screamed again and clutched at Cassie’s shirt. “Get up, Cassie! Please! Wake up! Get us out of here!” I yanked again at her shirt, pulling so hard this time that it ripped. Still she lay motionless. The scraping noise sounded again, closer this time, and I scrabbled in the opposite direction, my survival instinct going into overdrive. Staying as close to the drapes as possible, I crab-walked on my hands and legs, feeling around with my fingers along the baseboards. There had to be a way out from the inside; Cassie had to have done something to close the door behind her. A lock, another button, maybe even a lever. I just had to keep moving until I found it.

My fingers raced along the dry wood, feeling, searching, pleading, until they came into contact with something smooth and silky. I lurched backward, bumping into the back of the table, hitting my head on a corner. The soft material brushed against my face; it was only the tablecloth, nothing else. Furious, I pushed the table over,
wincing at the deafening crash it made against the floor, and resumed my search for the wall button. My eyes were shut tight, and my body, electric with fear and adrenaline, moved of its own accord. The air was dense; beads of sweat dropped like tears from the edge of my face. A hoarse panting sounded behind me, and I could not be sure if it was coming from Cassie or something else. Just when I thought I might collapse, my fingers came across a small indented circle, and as I pressed it, the wall slid back open. I stared in amazement as the bright lighting from Cassie’s closet illuminated the small space, and then I rushed from the room.

But my excitement was short-lived. Cassie had locked the outer door as well, dead-bolting it shut, imprisoning me twice. I gasped and pulled at the handle, but it was no use. I whirled around, scanning the floor for a key, but the floor was bare. Standing up on tiptoe, I felt around the edges of the door, my fingers clamoring desperately for something, anything that might let me out. But there was nothing. For another twenty minutes, I pounded and screamed, pausing only to snatch one of Cassie’s sweaters to cover myself with and to glance over my shoulder in case Cassie or whatever had made the scraping noise had followed me. I even hurled myself against the door in the desperate hope that it might give, but nothing worked. It would be another thirty minutes before Dominic heard my cries and came into Cassie’s room.

I fell out all at once as he swung open the door, knocking
him down against the floor. “Let me out!” I screamed. “Let me go!”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! What’s going on?” He scrambled back up again, his face a map of bewilderment.

I slammed the closet door shut and sank to the floor against it, sobs racking my body as the realization that I was safe—at least for now—settled over me.

“Hey.” Dominic’s voice was soft. He reached out with one hand. “What’s going on in here? What happened?”

I stopped crying and struggled to my feet. This was no time to start a conversation or answer any questions. I just wanted to get out of there. I had to leave. Now. Darting past him, I flew into the bathroom, searching for my clothes.

“Hey!” He paused at the bathroom door, one hand pressed against the frame. “What’s your name? Are you here with my sister? With Cassie? Where is she?”

“I’m right here.”

I screamed as her voice drifted out behind us, nearly falling over as I whirled around.

“Cassie?” Dominic stared at his sister.

Except for a few pieces of her hair being mussed and loose along the right-hand side of her face, her appearance was just as it had been before: calm, poised, unconcerned, all at the same time. Her eyes had a glossy quality to them, as if she’d just been sunbathing out by the pool, and except for the bottom of her T-shirt, which now hung ripped and untucked outside of her jeans, there was no sign of disarray, no indication that anything at all had happened.

“What the hell is going on?” Dominic demanded. “What happened?”

Cassie smiled, the edges of her mouth curling into a faint sneer. “Nothing happened,” she said. “We were just playing a game.” She paused, her eyes shifting from her brother’s face to mine. “Weren’t we, Marin?”

“ ‘To conjoin with the dead,’ ” Dominic read aloud from the little green book, “ ‘you must have a red room devoid of all light, two burning candles, and …’ ” He paused and then sat down, his legs giving way beneath him like pencils snapping.

“And what?” I asked.

“ ‘Two people whose loved one has died by their own hand.’ ” He looked up at me, pain swimming behind his eyes.

Don’t you understand, Marin? There’s no one else. You’re the only one who can do this with me.
The realization hit me all at once, a fist between the eyes. “
That’s
why she picked me,” I whispered. “She needed another person who had survived someone’s suicide.” It was so awful that I wanted to cry; so horrifying that I wanted to scream. “How’d she even
know?” I said instead. “I mean, how’d she find out about my mother?”

“You know how it is in school.” Dominic was making an effort to talk. “Some people make it a point to find out everything they possibly can about someone new. Someone different.” He shrugged, a mixture of embarrassment and distress crossing his face. “Cassie must’ve asked around about you, found out somehow.”

“I just …” I sank down against the wall directly across from him, holding my head in my hands. “I just can’t believe it.”

Dominic was quiet.

“That’s so sick.” I lifted my head, stared at the front of his knees. “It’s demented.” I bit my lip, lifted my eyes to meet his. “I know she’s your sister and everything, but that is just freaking crazy. I mean, who
does
that to someone?”

“I know.” Dominic winced, as if the admission hurt him physically. “You’re right. It is sick. But that’s what I think Cassie is right now. Sick.”

“You can say that again.”

“Marin, you don’t have to believe me when I say this, but this isn’t really who Cassie is. I’m telling you, she’s a good person. She didn’t used to be like this. Something happened to her.…”

“Yeah,
something
happened to her,” I blurted out. “She turned into a psychotic bitch.” I leaned down and fiddled with my shoelace. He couldn’t possibly blame me for being
so pissed off. Still, I was talking about his sister here, his only sibling, someone he still had a connection with, still loved. I hoped he didn’t freak out on me.

“Because of all this shit she’s gotten involved in,” Dominic pleaded. “And yeah, it’s her fault she got involved in the first place, but it’s only because she misses Gram so much. She hasn’t been able to move on since Gram died, and with my mom and dad gone all the time, and with me doing all my sports, she probably feels like she has no one. She’s desperate, you know? She’s lonely, Marin, and she’s just been trying to make that loneliness go away.”

“Lonely?”
I almost spat the word back out at him. “Are you kidding me? She’s the most popular girl at St. Anselm’s! She must have two hundred friends, Dominic. Give me a break.”

“You want to know how popular Cassie is at St. Anselm’s?” Dominic asked, hooking a thumb into his belt loop. “She pays people to be friends with her.”

I squinted over at him and raised an eyebrow.

“Ask around. Ask anyone. Cassie’ll give you whatever you want, buy you anything you need, as long as you say you’re her friend. You know Rachel Vernits with the red hair? Olivia Randall, who’s captain of the cheerleading team?”

I nodded slowly as he reminded me of the other two popularity queens: tall, lithe girls with big boobs, impeccable hair, beautiful teeth. They barely glanced at me in the
cafeteria and rarely, if ever, deigned to move out of the way when we crossed paths in the hallway. Cassie was always planted in the middle of them.

“Cassie bought Rachel a membership to our country club last year. Olivia smokes Pall Malls. She had Cassie promise that she would buy her cigarettes for a whole year if she wanted to be part of their group.”

“What?” I was aghast. “Why would she do something like that? Cassie can be friends with whoever she wants.”

“No, she can’t,” Dominic said. “Cassie puts on a good show, but underneath, she’s just a scared little kid.”

“Scared?” I repeated. “Of what?”

“She was always shy,” Dominic said. “But when she was younger, she was so nervous about school and not being able to read well that she started stuttering. Then she got so embarrassed about her stutter that she barely said a word at all. It got a little better in middle school, until she got placed in some of the special classes for her dyslexia and her friends started dropping her like a hot potato.” He shrugged. “Maybe she thinks it’s a guarantee of some kind, paying these girls. Maybe that way they won’t dump her like the other ones did.”

I felt a wave of pity for Cassie, followed immediately by a flood of aggravation. I didn’t want to feel sorry for this girl. Not even a little bit. So she’d had a stutter once. And maybe she still struggled with dyslexia. Neither of them were the end of the world. She didn’t have
cancer,
for crying out loud. Or one leg. She wasn’t fat or ugly, and she hadn’t
been disfigured by some terrible accident. And even if she had, none of those things gave her the right to mess with people’s lives the way she’d messed with mine. End of story.

“She’s lonely, Marin. That’s all it is.” Dominic’s voice sounded far away. “That might not be something you can understand, but when I think about the lengths she’s gone to just to be in touch again with someone who loved her …” He swallowed a sound coming out of his mouth and shook his head, forcing it back down.

I opened my mouth to say something when a scream sounded above us. There was a crash, followed by the sound of something breaking. Another scream, higher than the first, echoed through a hallway, and we could hear feet running.