PS—If I go to this ridiculous, adolescent ritual All Hallows’ Eve party… will you come with me? If by some miracle you will, come at 7:30 pm.

From: AriHait558

To: RealxChick

Date: 9 Oct 2004

Subject: Re: Re: Death of Vocabulary

The apocalypse couldn’t stop me. Come to the chapel now. I’ll bring cookies, and we can wallow in the minutiae of our lives in proper angsty fashion.

Expectant,

Ari

There is no reply from Kaitlyn on the server.

23 116 days until the incident

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Saturday, 9 October 2004, 1:03 am

Attic

The noise was jarring in the silence of the basement, only the creak of a floorboard ahead of me. I stopped midstep and let my foot hang in the air, holding my breath. Every hair on my arms and the back of my neck slowly rose as I peered into the murk, which was nothing but hints of shadow masquerading as light and dark, sharp-looking edges and fuzzy blurs. And the room was still. Too still.

“Hello?”

A sensation, like that of the room suddenly expanding, even though nothing had changed, knocked the breath out of me, and I dropped my foot and hunched my shoulders from some primeval instinct—as though I was about to be pounced on. Then I saw her. The thin rake of a girl, the one I’d seen watching me from the basement, and in the vandalized mirror… She stood at the back of the room, in the shadows.

She was grinning.

“Dee? Is that you?”

And I heard it. A low breathing, slow and humid. The room itself was icy, but there was fever in the breath.

Adrenaline flooded my body, so that even when I looked back at what I had momentarily seen, my vision spotted in front of my eyes. I couldn’t tell if it was moving closer, even though I could hear the creak of weight falling on the wood and the click of nails on the hard surface.

I stumbled backwards and blinked furiously, staring with wide eyes as the dark shape peered around the corner at me—the corner which led to the stairs of the building, the corner which I had to go around—and vanished.

Crazy Crazy Crazy—you are so crazy.

I told myself to get a grip—I was very, very rational—but I couldn’t move my feet.

These meds. These damn meds! “Not real,” I kept saying it to myself over and over. Not real, not real—there was nothing there.

And yet… when I finally forced myself to move, and go down the corridor between the precariously balanced items that seemed to sway above me, I smelled something—I smelled sour breath, wet fur (?), and earth. I glanced quickly around, and the darkness in the basement became pregnant with awareness, as if I was the actor, and the junk the observers.

I raced upstairs to the attic where I now sit, wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket, dreading the moment when I have to go back and traverse that dark, junky graveyard of a basement once more.

Because, whatever it was, it was very, very real.

24

[The tape that corresponds to the notes by Dr. Annabeth Lansing below has never been found.]

Dr. Lansing Therapy Notes

Session #48: Carly/Kaitlyn Johnson

Monday, 11 October 2004

Kaitlyn persists in her delusions regarding the dark shape (possibly a girl), but now an olfactory element has emerged. She describes the smell as “ashy” and “dead,” like “something out of a graveyard, only less bland.” When asked when she sees and smells these things, she replies that it is “random and unpredictable.” I fear that the worsening delusions may indicate incipient psychosis, and I will therefore begin grounding exercises from next session.

25 135 days after the incident

Criminal Investigation Department, Portishead Headquarters

Avon and Somerset Constabulary, Portishead, Bristol

Friday, 17 June 2005, 15h00

AUDIO INTERVIEW #2, PART 1: Detective Chief Inspector Floyd

Homes (FH) and Scott Fromley (SF)

[Audio interference]

(FH): Detective Chief Inspector Floyd Homes, Avon and Somerset CID, interviewing Mr. Scott Fromley on the seventeenth of June 2005. So, Scott. Here we are again. You were a student at Elmbridge High in Somerset?

(SF): You asked me this last time.

(FH): It’s standard procedure—please answer.

(SF): Yes, I was.

(FH): For how long?

(SF): I told you this already. Since seventh grade.

(FH): The last time we talked, you were closemouthed about Miss Johnson. Didn’t seem to know much about her. And yet here you sit, key witness. Possible suspect. You may want to be a bit more honest with me this time round.

[Silence]

Did Carly ever talk about school? The teachers? How she felt about Elmbridge?

[Pause]

(SF): No.

(FH): So she never had any complaints about the school?

(SF): If you’re asking me whether she had a vendetta against the school—no.

(FH): You seem to know her quite intimately, Scott, to know what she thinks. Tell me more about what happened after the Halloween party, about what happened with Juliet McClarin.

(SF): For God’s sake, I don’t know, do I? I told you back in December that I don’t know.

[Silence]

(FH): Why don’t you tell me again?

(SF): Is this some kind of joke to you people? Are you all just sitting there wasting time? You’re asking me the same questions over and over, and my answer is the same—I don’t know!

(FH): You want to calm down for me? I’d hate to have to put those cuffs back on.

[Pause]

(SF): Sorry.

(FH): Tell me about Carly. How was she after Halloween?

(SF): I guess… after November she started to seem… I don’t know… not really herself, I guess. Naida told me that she was going to therapy more… that her sleep issues were playing up. Stuff like that.

(FH): Naida Chounan-Dupre. Whom you were dating at the time?

(SF): Yes.

(FH): Did Miss Chounan-Dupre tell you about Carly’s condition?

(SF): Condition? You mean that she never slept? Yeah, she told me. And I just told you.

[Pause]

(FH): Did you ever speak to Miss Johnson at night?

(SF): Um… [Pause] I don’t remember.

(FH): It’s best if you’re honest, son.

(SF): Yeah, I guess I did. Yeah.

(FH): What was Carly’s relationship like with Naida?

(SF): I don’t know. It was complicated, I guess.

(FH): Care to elaborate?

[Audio crackle]

(SF): Carly and Naida seemed close most of the time. I mean, they weren’t anything alike, so I don’t know why they were even friends, but they were. But then sometimes they seemed to hate each other.

(FH): They weren’t alike? In what way?

(SF): Carly was shy… she wasn’t that into guys or fashion. Naida’s louder than Carly. Stronger. Harder. She’s flamboyant and dresses the part whenever she can—[Laughs, then stops, swallows] Could.

(FH): You said that Carly’s relationship with Naida was complicated. But you’ve said they were close. How is that complicated?