It’s dark and cramped in the second-story girls bathroom. There are only two stalls, broken and flickering overhead lights, and one long, scratched mirror, which makes it the least desirable choice of all the restrooms. It’s the only place in Moon Danes School that is supposed to be haunted. Seniors often dare freshmen to come in here when most of the lights have gone dead. They usually hold the door shut and cackle in the safety of the hallway. The fourteen-year-olds are supposed to call out “Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary, Bloody Mary” and wait for the conjuring to work. The third incantation would only summon the latest class clown who was waiting in the last stall. It was a cheap trick but one that had an impression on me, even as a tiny child.
The first time I heard about the prank I was in fifth grade. It was just two years after Billie’s abduction but it didn’t feel like it to me. The nightmares were at their worst back then. I didn’t just dream of that thing, or, the thing I had thought I had seen. The faces of Moon Danes that wouldn’t let me forget what I had done—what my lie had cost—haunted me even in my subconscious. It was inescapable. My everyday hell invaded the one place I could have found relief in. It didn’t help that my best friend wouldn’t open up about that day. All she would say was that I should “stop reading those weird books.” The more she wouldn’t explain that day, the more she wouldn’t acknowledge the monster we had seen, the more I wanted answers. So, I checked out even more books behind her back. When I heard about the senior’s trick, I knew I had to go there, too. I was just a dumb kid back then, one that held onto the smallest hope that maybe one of them had seen something like I had seen. Maybe there was one other person who had seen something like I had. And maybe . . . if Bloody Mary was real, the creature I had seen was real, too.