PROLOGUE
Penny
In the far corner of the cell, Penny lay curled up in a ball. She clamped her hands firmly over her ears and fought to keep those horrible voices out. They came at night, relentless, mixing together in a disjointed chorus of wailing agony and hate.
She kept her eyes shut tight now. She had made the mistake, that first night, and had watched the ghosts try in vain to torment the living, but to no avail. As eerie as they were, luminescent figures that floated about, that winked in and out of existence and screamed their pain and loss, no one woke. The others barely stirred. No one believed in ghosts, not when you couldn’t see or hear them, not even if they were wailing at you, their faces inches away from yours, their baleful glares betraying madness. Only she knew how real they were, all too well, and the folly of granting them audience. Penny had learned, long ago, that to acknowledge the dead was to invite their attentions. Now, she refused to even look, and spent each night, every night, all night, curled up and facing the wall, trying her best not to listen. It never made a difference, she heard it all and suffered as her cellmates should have suffered. These were not her ghosts, she should not have to bear them.
Screaming Girl was the loudest. Always so shrill, so persistent, Penny wondered how even a ghost could not go hoarse from that much caterwauling. Penny had caught a glimpse of her that first night. What was left of her hair was scorched, frayed, and hung in tatters, barely hiding the horribly burnt and scarred scalp beneath. She careened about in a frenzy of movement, her limbs and skin crackling obscenely as they shook with pain. Faint tendrils of smoke seeped endlessly from her hair, eyes and hands, and faded in the dim fluorescent light that lit the cell from above. Every so often, she would stop and make a mad dash for Raphael, the nervous boy with the horrible stutter. Even in sleep his brow was fixed in a guilty furrow. Screaming Girl leapt, as she always did, her burning hands raging forwards to pierce his eyes, to sink into the flesh of his face, but stopped short, as they always did. She let her fingers caress his cheek, and she would murmur the only coherent words she seemed to know.
“Your lies were so sweet…”
Then she would be off again, dashing madly about the room, screaming.
Penny shrank away from her, from all of them. Screaming Girl was by far the loudest, but the others frightened her more. The Drunk Lady swayed about, moaning of lost loves and brandishing a broken glass that wept perpetual tears of blood from jagged shards. Awful Granny barely spoke above a whisper, but with each word she promised bloody retribution for even the slightest transgression against church, state and common decency. The Creepy Man was the worst. He never made a sound. He shifted about the room on sturdy legs that supported a twitching torso and shaking hands, glaring at them all in turn. His face, matted with long, damp and thinning hair, masked a pair of wide, luminous eyes that stole hateful looks about. His hands and feet were caught in irons, held together by short bits of chain which seemed to catch the light. His feet, which would on occasion slam down with each agitated step, never made so much as a soft thud on the concrete. He would sometimes hunch over and convulse in coughing fits, without even a whisper escaping his lips. His chains, which dangled and slammed together during his odd patrols about the cell, did so in silence. Penny had once caught the full effect of his hateful glare. It burned into her, and it didn’t seem enough to slam her eyes shut. She had burrowed deep under the thin shelter of her blanket, her shaking hands holding her head against her knees. She had done that for the rest of the night, silently praying for the sun to rise.
And so it would go, each and every night. The ghosts would rise, and Penny, at the tender age of twelve, would suffer them until daybreak.
“Not mine,” Penny whispered, her voice muffled into her pillow. “You’re not mine, go away…”
But a voice spoke in her ear. “They’re not, but I am, dear…”
“You go away too,” Penny groaned. “Stop bothering me. I didn’t do anything to you. I hate you.”
“Now deary,” the voice purred, hovering just over her. “I taught you better manners than that.”
Penny sobbed, and tightened up even more. “Just go away,” she said. Her tears seeping out and soaking her flat pillow. “I’m sorry you died, I’m sorry, but I didn’t…”
“But you did, dear.” The voice was impossibly close, and Penny could almost feel an icy breath on her neck. “Didn’t I always tell you? Tell me, what did I say?”
“Go away…”
“Momma knows best, Momma knows all. And you believe Momma when she tells you…”
“No,” Penny cried. “No no no no no no…”
“Momma died because you killed her.”
Penny shrank away from her, pressed her hands tighter against her ears, and almost screamed when she felt the hand on her shoulder.
“Hey there, whoa, it’s just me…”
Penny exhaled and turned to face her brother.
“She talking to you again?” He sat down on her cot and stretched out his legs to form a barrier between her and the rest of the group. When Penny nodded and buried her face in her pillow, he reached over to ruffle her hair with a gentle hand. “She’s wrong. You can tell her that, too.”
“You just did.” Penny sniffled and shifted so that her head rested against his lap. “But she says—”
“Just because she’s dead don’t make her words true.” He winced as she pushed against a particularly tender spot on his arm. She lifted her head, the skin around her eyes almost translucent from lack of sleep. “Aw, Penny. I’m okay. I told you, it doesn’t hurt as much as before. Put your head down. Nobody’s gonna come over while I’m here, okay?”
She did as he said, eyes closing while calloused hands patted her back in that awkward way of older brothers comforting younger siblings. It would work for a while, until Screaming Girl began a fresh tirade. His hands felt patronizing. He believed her about the ghosts, at least that’s what he always said. He believed she heard them, that she saw them, how could he not? How many girls lay awake all night, pretending to shake with fright? But did he actually believe the ghosts existed, or did he think his sister was simply cracking up? She tried not to think about it. It was enough he was there, that he would always be there to protect her. It would have to be.
“How long?” she asked finally.
“’Til sunrise? Couple of hours. Then you can sleep, sis.”
“Unless he takes you again,” she said. “Unless he takes you away and makes you scream.”
“He’s been gone for weeks this time,” he assured her, though his voice sounded far off, haunted. “Maybe he’ll stay away for a while. Maybe he’s dead.”
Penny snorted. “You can’t kill the devil, stupid. He just comes back, mad. He’s always worse when he’s mad.”
He sighed, and patted her back again.
“Just hold on, Penny,” Pike said. “I’ll get us out of here.”