The Dead House

1

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Sunday, 29 August 2004, 12:24 am

Claydon Mental Hospital, Somerset

I am myself again.

Carly has disappeared into the umbra, and I am alone. Ink on my fingers—she's been writing in the Message Book.

Good night, sis! she writes. We'll be back at school soon. I can't wait!

I wouldn't have done this diary thing, except Carly thought it was a good idea too. See, Dr. Lansing thinks that getting my thoughts out of my head and onto paper will allow me to be free of them. She gave us both a journal with lock and key, and the instruction to "be honest and whole." Mine is black (ha ha), and Carly's is green. I'd like to think mine is black because it's Lansing's impression of my nature—solid, unchanging, hidden—but really I think she chose it because black's not a color.

You see, Diary… Dr. Lansing is convinced I'm not really here.

I'm not the diary sort, but if I'm going to record my life, I'm going to do it thoroughly. Honesty, honesty, honesty. Yes? Lansing can't tell me I don't really exist—product of trauma and all that—when my thoughts and feelings are as real as Carly's.

I am real.

I exist.

They won't kill me send me away.

Message Book Entry

Diary of Kaitlyn Johnson

Tuesday, 31 August 2004, 2:14 am

Claydon Mental Hospital

A crow caws outside my window each night. I can never see him, but I know he sees me.

Elmbridge High School looms before me like some awful miasma—we return for our final school year in a few short hours! Our progress has been "admirable." What that really means is that Carly is eating again and that I haven't done anything "potentially self-harming" in weeks. Dr. Lansing thinks she did that, but it was always Carly. What it boils down to is a series of carefully planned and executed lies.

Everything is timed. Everything is coordinated. Everything is rehearsed.

Carly and I pretend to be recovering from a sickness we don't have. But when no one will believe you, you become the liar they think you are.

We work the system.

After our parents died, they sent us to Claydon. I can barely write the words without flinching. Without the deepest dread sliding over me like freezing water. Claydon is what you'd call a live-in nuthouse—excuse me, "psychiatric facility"—for troubled teens. Really it's a place for embarrassed parents to hide away their mistakes.

Carly isn't the mistake, though. I am.

We were fifteen and orphans and wards of Her Majesty. Wards of the social care system. In 2003, from January to September, they watched us, because they thought Carly might try to off herself. When it became obvious she was mostly fine, they went looking for a school. I guess Elmbridge High School won because it has a boarding facility. That was last year. We were sent back here for the summer. Until we turn eighteen (count: 274 nights), we're their problem. All the other Elmbridge High pupils go home to their families, but we don't have one of those anymore.

Elmbridge is definitely a step up from Claydon, but it's not the ultimate goal. The ultimate City of Gold is the sweet haze of urban cityscape light pollution, that rot scent of rubbish gone sour, and the endless living night that is London.

Freedom.

Where the night is vivid with noise, people, and anonymity—where the depraved live hand in hand with the righteous. London is awake all night. London is somewhere I can disappear. Or not. As I choose. I can find some kind of life.

Elmbridge is the gateway; Dr. Lansing is the gatekeeper.

Anyway—what else matters except that Elmbridge isn't Claydon? Because anywhere outside of Claydon pretty much takes the cake; a sewer in hell would be a step up. Anywhere that freedom is an option is automatically better than being locked behind a pristine white door, forgotten in a neat little cage.

I'm sorry. I really do try not to get angry. Carly says anger is a weapon, but sometimes I think it's just another cage.

So these are the goals:

The real reason we ended up in Claydon is because they think Carly's crazy damaged. They think the accident caused a fracture in her mind. I am, apparently, the result of trauma. They think it started that night. They think I don't exist.

It's all about "putting me away again."

See, they think I'm a personality disorder. I touched on this before. I am "a way of coping" when Carly was coping just fine. DID—dissociative identity disorder. I'm a coping mechanism… an alternative personality. I'm a symptom. They think I'm like a disease—I'm infecting Carly.

No one believes that I've always been here. Carly says it's because no one trusts the word of a teenager. And our parents, the only two people who could have told them the truth, are gone forever. I guess Jaime could tell them too, but who believes a five-year-old?

This is how it works:

I'm here courtesy of Carly. I'm anywhere because of her. Not that I'm complaining, and she'd never admit this, but I'm like the wart on her arse she'll never show, but she constantly knows is there. Where she goes, I go.

I am a prisoner of my skin. My bones are my cage. But she tells me she needs me, that I make her so happy, that she couldn't live without me, and I know it's true. It's true for both of us.

Carly and I are closer than sisters. Closer than twins. We might as well be the same person, because we share the same body. But we are different. You might say she's my better half. We share one life, each getting part.

Carly gets the day.

I get the night.

We live in shifts; it's always been this way. I've always been here. Always, always, al

ways.

Wish they'd believe that.

Unfortunately, I was unlucky enough to be born to the night watch, so I'm the one nominated for deletion integration

The

Big

Nothing

Dr. Lansing says it's a good thing, but I'm not much tempted by oblivion. Not today, anyway.

I don't blame Carly for being the one in the light. I love her more than anything. She's my opposite completely, and she'll say she's the weaker half of our equation, but the truth is she's my rock. She is everything I wish I were.

See how honest I'm being, Lansing, dear?

During the crossover, at dawn and dusk, just as the sun is moving behind or above the horizon, I can sometimes feel Carly coming. It's hard to describe. I get sort of dizzy… like I'm high… and just as I'm about to go, I feel her brush past me. Not quite touch… more like a familiar scent or a gentle breath. It's the closest we get to touching. I can almost talk to her in those endless minutes when we are neither one nor the other.

Almost.

But, since that's impossible, we use other methods—the Message Book and little notes scribbled on purple Post-its stuck here and there.

Gotta go—I hear the nurse coming for checks.

4:04 am

Where was I? Oh, yeah. Now that we're heading back to Elmbridge High School, it's safe to write in the Message Book again. For a while, back in late June, Dr. Lansing read it without our knowing, and would say things that could only have come from reading our exchanges. But we figured it out soon enough, and that was the last time we wrote in it. Lansing wanted that, of course. She saw it as Carly indulging in her alter ego—an "enabling behavior." When Carly wasn't writing to me there, Lansing probably smiled and put a neat little tick next to a task box that read "stop all messages." But she was wrong if she thought that would stop us.

We wrote to each other in the bathroom mirror, in steam. We wrote Post-it notes, which we hid in unlikely places and swallowed after reading (not the nicest thing to force down your esophagus, but they checked the bins to make sure I wasn't smoking). She forced us underground, and underground we'll stay, until the day we pack our bags and head for the city, where the night never sleeps.

For now, my nights are full of nothings, and Carly's days are full of everythings.

2

155 days until the incident

Session #45 Audio

Dr. Annabeth Lansing (AL) and Carly "Kaitlyn" Johnson (CJ)

Tuesday, 31 August 2004, 8:34 PM