The Silent Scream (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  “You won’t be there that long,” Jess said, hoping it was true. “We’ll be fine here, really.”

  “Call Maddie,” the housemother insisted. “The number is in the back of the telephone book. She’ll come.” Her eyes were closing. “Can’t … you can’t stay here alone.” She was fading fast. “Promise … promise you’ll call Maddie. Need … someone in charge. Promise.”

  Jess would have said almost anything at that point to give Mrs. Coates peace of mind. “We promise.” A siren’s scream approached the house. “We’ll call your friend. Please don’t worry.”

  “In the back of the telephone book,” Mrs. Coates repeated. “Maddie’s number.”

  Trucker went with Mrs. Coates and the ambulance. Jess reluctantly dialed the number of Mrs. Coates’s friend, Madeline Carthew. Because she had promised.

  There was no answer.

  When she realized no one was going to answer, Jess hung up. I’ll try again tomorrow, she told herself, and went into the kitchen. Her housemates had gathered around the small round wooden table in the center of the room. No longer brightened by daytime sunshine, the kitchen was now almost as gloomy as the rest of the house.

  “I don’t see why we can’t fend for ourselves,” Ian said when Jess reported what had happened with her phone call.

  “Me, either,” Milo agreed. “We’re adults, right?”

  Cath groaned. “Are you kidding? If my parents found out I was living in this house without a chaperon, they’d yank me out of here so fast, my hair would fall out.”

  If Jess hadn’t been so depressed, she would have smiled. With all that hair, it would take one superhuman yank to render Cath bald.

  “Who’d tell them?” Ian asked. “They wouldn’t have to know.”

  “Hey, wait a minute,” Jon protested. “Mrs. Coates was supposed to fix nice, home-cooked meals for us. Meat, mashed potatoes, gravy, you know, all that good stuff I’m used to. I’m a growing boy. I need nourishment.”

  “Why can’t we all cook?” Linda suggested. “Simple stuff, like soup and sandwiches and pasta. We can take turns, or everyone can fix their own.”

  “I don’t know,” Cath said doubtfully, glancing around the dimly lit kitchen as if she expected something unpleasant to leap out of the shadowy corners. “Maybe somewhere else it would be okay. But this place is pretty creepy. Do we really want to be here alone?”

  “There are seven of us,” Ian pointed out, “including Trucker. I wouldn’t call that being alone.”

  Cath’s eyes moved to Jess. “You’re the monitor. What do you think?”

  Jess was thinking that it might be interesting. It might even be fun. No adult supervision … hadn’t they all come to college to grow up? She felt terrible about Mrs. Coates’s accident, but wouldn’t this be the perfect opportunity to take charge of their own lives, with no adult telling them what to do and how to do it?

  Before she could answer Cath, Trucker returned from the hospital. “Dislocated hip,” he told Jess. “The doctor ordered bed rest. She’ll be there for a while. She’s okay, though. Worried about you guys. Did you call that friend of hers?”

  “Yes. No answer. I’ll try again tomorrow.” She hesitated. Should they tell Trucker what they’d been discussing? They would need his help. If it turned out that he was the sort of person who felt compelled to call the university and fink on them, they’d simply give up the idea and send for Mrs. Coates’s friend Maddie.

  But Trucker didn’t strike her as the “finking” type.

  He wasn’t. “Sounds good to me,” he said when she’d explained. “But you can go ahead and invite Mrs. Carthew to move in without worrying that she’ll accept. I’ve met her. If she agreed at all, it would only be out of a sense of duty. She hates everyone under the age of fifty. She’d be miserable here. And so would the rest of us, and that’s the truth. Handle it right and she’ll turn you down, I promise.”

  “I will call her tomorrow,” Jess announced. “That way, we won’t be breaking our promise to Mrs. Coates. Maybe we can strike some kind of deal with her where she just pops in occasionally to make sure we’re all still breathing and Nightingale Hall is still standing.”

  Cath looked doubtful, but when everyone else began chattering about ways to make things run more smoothly, she joined in.

  Jess ignored her own doubts until everyone stood up, ready to abandon the kitchen for the night. As she left her chair, the wind outside suddenly picked up speed. Leaves and twigs flew at the windows, clawing and scratching at the glass. One of the loose shutters began banging angrily against the brick. The whistle of the wind strengthened, became a wail with a lonely, desolate sound to it. The kitchen light flickered uncertainly.

  Cath jumped to her feet. “I don’t know about anyone else,” she said in a shaky voice, “but that wind shrieking around the house is giving me the creeps!” She hurried out of the room, calling over her shoulder as she left, “If that girl spent nine months in this house with that awful wind howling at her, no wonder she committed suicide!”

  And then the kitchen light went out, plunging the entire room into darkness.

  Chapter 5

  TRUCKER’S VOICE CUT THROUGH the sudden darkness. “It’s okay. It does that sometimes. Loose wire or something, I guess. It’s only this kitchen light, though. It won’t be dark upstairs. There’s a flashlight right here in the drawer.” There were fumbling sounds, and then the relief of a flashlight’s glow.

  Linda and Jess exchanged grateful glances.

  Holding the light in front of him, Trucker led the way out of the kitchen and up the stairs.

  He was right. The dim glow of the ceiling fixture in the upstairs hall met them as they reached the top of the stairs.

  “Okay, you’re all set,” Trucker said, switching off the flashlight. “I’m going back down and check out that kitchen light. I’m no electrician, but I think I can deal with a loose wire, if that’s all it is.”

  “Please don’t electrocute yourself,” Jess begged. She was more convinced than ever that Trucker was handy to have around, especially with Mrs. Coates in the hospital. He knew so much about the house.

  He laughed. “Yeah, that would be a shocking experience, wouldn’t it?”

  “Do you live here in the house,” she asked, hoping he would say yes. He had known where the flashlight was. No one else would have known that.

  “I live out back.” He tilted his head toward the rear of the house. “Apartment over the garage.”

  Jess left the three guys in the hall discussing Trucker’s apartment and went to her room. Before entering, she watched in envy as Cath and Linda opened the doors to theirs. Hers, she knew, was prettier. Cath’s had no flowered wallpaper. Her walls were painted a pale, washed-out blue. And Linda’s walls were stark white. Bor-ing.

  But … no one had died in their rooms.

  She held her breath as she opened the door. Maybe that awful chill would be gone. Maybe it had never been there in the first place. The excitement of her first day at college could have given her chills …

  She stepped inside, closing the door behind her. And sagged against it in disappointment as cold air slapped against her face.

  Great room for an Eskimo, she thought. She hurried over to the chest of drawers to yank a sweater from the bottom drawer. As she stood up and slid her arms into the sleeves, she remembered the terrible news Ian had given them and found herself wondering how … how the girl Giselle had taken her own life and, her eyes circling the room, where … where had she been found? On the bed? On the floor?

  Shivering, Jess settled at the desk with pencil and paper. Organizing the household with lists of menus and job assignments would be useful—and would take her mind off Giselle. Tomorrow, she would call Mrs. Coates’s friend Madeline. She had promised.

  She stayed up later than she should have, reluctant to climb into what had been Giselle’s bed.

  When her eyelids felt cement-laden and she couldn’t stall another minute, she slipped into a lo
ng white T-shirt and slid in between the lilac-flowered sheets.

  Milo had said the house might be haunted.

  Jess pushed her face into the pillow. Milo was so quiet. She’d had better conversations with toast. Maybe he had tons of morbid thoughts. Maybe he sat around reading Stephen King and thinking macabre thoughts about ghosts and haunted houses and howling wind and foggy nights.

  Maybe he was just kidding.

  Or maybe there was an uneasy spirit lingering at Nightingale Hall.

  Exhausted by the day’s excitement, Jess fell asleep quickly. When she was jolted out of sleep sometime later, the room was still pitch black, the house silent. But … she had heard something … a sound had penetrated her deep sleep … what was it? … a scream … someone had screamed … loud and shrill and desperate….

  Jess listened carefully.

  Nothing.

  Tossing her covers aside, she ran to the door and flung it open. Again, she listened …

  Still nothing. The house slept on.

  But … she could still hear the scream that had yanked her so abruptly from sleep. The terrible sound echoed in her ears.

  Maybe … could it have been a dream?

  Nightmare was more like it.

  Listening intently one more time and hearing nothing but the wind stirring the branches of the oak trees outside, Jess closed her door and padded back to the warmth of her bed.

  But, with the sound of that desperate scream still ringing in her ears, it was a long time before sleep returned.

  The next morning, bright golden rays traced a pathway across the shining hardwood floors in Jess’s room. The birds in the ancient oak trees argued furiously over breakfast. The sounds of people slowly awakening filled the second story of Nightingale Hall.

  Dressing quickly in denim shorts and a bright green T-shirt, Jess hurried downstairs.

  Trucker was in the kitchen, lying on his back under the kitchen sink. “Needs a new elbow,” he said cryptically, waving a red-handled wrench at Jess. “Leaking down here.”

  It struck her that he didn’t look much older than the rest of them. “Where did you learn to do all this stuff?” she asked as she poured a cup of coffee. Had he learned to make coffee at the same time he was learning plumbing?

  “Around. My old man took off when I was eight. Somebody had to take care of things. I was elected.”

  His father had taken a hike? Jess made no comment. Her parents’ divorce had been painful. But at least she sometimes saw her father. Her parents were still friendly.

  Footsteps pounded down the stairs and Ian, Jon, and Milo burst into the kitchen, proclaiming starvation. Linda and Cath followed a few minutes later.

  “Anyone hear anything … weird last night?” Jess asked when they were all in the kitchen.

  “Just that stupid wind,” Cath said crankily.

  Linda shook her head no, Milo shrugged, and Jon said with a grin, “I was too busy having a great dream about Kim Basinger.”

  “Why?” Ian asked Jess. “Did you hear something?”

  Learning that no one else had heard the scream convinced Jess that she had been dreaming. Probably the result of Ian’s porch horror story.

  “I guess not,” she told him, handing him the coffee pot. “Must have been the wind, like Cath said.”

  Breakfast was a haphazard affair. Linda, scheduled for her first swim practice, ate as if she hadn’t eaten in days. Cath ate nothing, sipping quietly on a cup of black coffee, while Jon yearned loudly for bacon and eggs and bagels as he crunched cold cereal. Milo, his head down, drew intricate designs on his toast with a jelly knife. Jess and Ian talked about school. Too excited to eat much, she drank juice and wrote her name in all three of the notebooks she’d brought with her.

  By the time they left for campus, Mrs. Coates’s immaculate kitchen looked as if it had been picked up by a maniacal giant and dropped upside down, spilling the contents out of cupboards, drawers, and pantry.

  Trucker surveyed the damage, shrugged, and went back to work.

  On campus, nervous, excited freshmen, trying hard to look cool and confident, milled around outside the beautiful ivy-covered brick buildings. Upperclassmen smiled condescendingly as they walked by.

  The first girl Jess met at registration inside Butler Hall asked her which dorm she lived in. “I’m at Miller, myself,” the tall, thin, brown-haired girl said. “I think it’s the best. So, where are you? Briggs? Devereaux? The Quad?”

  “I’m not on campus,” Jess admitted. The hall was very crowded, and she didn’t see Ian anywhere. In the crowd, she’d been separated from her housemates. Maybe they were in another building. “I’m up on the hill, at Nightingale Hall.”

  “Off-campus? Oh.” The girl looked disappointed. Then a glimmer of curiosity slid across her face. “Nightingale Hall? You mean that creepy place with all those big trees?”

  Jess nodded. She wished the line for registration would move faster. It was stuffy in the hall. Everyone else seemed to be with people they knew.

  “I heard something about that place,” the brown-haired girl said. Her pale eyes searched Jess’s face. “Something weird.”

  Jess feigned innocence. “Really?” She did not feel like discussing that story about Giselle.

  “Yeah. Like, no one wants to stay there.” She paused for dramatic effect. Her lips curved in a smile that hinted at meanness. “That’s why they had to get freshmen to stay there, because they don’t know any better. Because …” the pale eyes glinted, “because some girl died there!”

  When Jess said nothing, the girl added, “But you probably didn’t know about that, did you?”

  “Of course I knew,” Jess said lightly. “It doesn’t bother me, or anyone else at the house.” She spotted Ian’s long, dark hair and white T-shirt. “Excuse me, I see my friends over there. ’Bye!” Then, even though the line Ian, Jon, and Cath were in was longer than hers, she dashed over to join them.

  “Whew!” she told Ian, “am I ever glad to see you! I got tangled up with The Great Inquisitor over there.”

  Ian nodded. “Yeah, I know what you mean. I’ve told three people I’m staying at Nightingale Hall. They all looked at me like I had a screw loose. I think it’s because nothing was ever resolved about that girl who died.”

  Jess looked up at him. “Come again?”

  “Well, the official verdict was apparent suicide. The key word there being apparent. Meaning they couldn’t prove it for sure. Trucker said there wasn’t much of an investigation. The school wanted it hushed up, I guess. Understandable if you think about it. But,” Ian glanced around the crowded hall, “judging by the way people react to Nightingale Hall, I’d say the word definitely got out.”

  Cath had been listening. Her thin, oval face seemed tightly pinched. “It sounds so gross,” she said in a near-whisper. “Someone told me she was found hanging from the light fixture. Mrs. Coates found her.” Cath shuddered. “It must have been awful for her.”

  The light fixture? Jess thought, repulsed. In my room?

  Then the line moved forward, Jon mentioned a party the following night, and the conversation about the death in Jess’s room ended.

  But she couldn’t help wondering exactly what “apparent suicide” meant. Didn’t “apparent” mean there was a question about Giselle’s death?

  What, exactly, was the question?

  Chapter 6

  THROUGHOUT THE DAY, JESS was too busy registering for classes and, later, buying incredibly expensive secondhand textbooks at the campus bookstore to dwell on unanswered questions about a girl she’d never even met.

  “I can’t believe my book bill!” she complained as the group gathered outside the bookstore. “I could have bought a new car with that money. Or taken a trip around the world.”

  “Freshmen aren’t allowed to have cars on campus,” Jon pointed out, clearly annoyed by the fact. “If we were, I would have breezed past you yesterday, tooling up the driveway in my red BMW.”

  Of course his
car would be red. And Jess bet it was a convertible, too.

  “My red BMW convertible,” Jon added dreamily. “But,” he added brightly, “since I’m not living on campus, I can have a car. I checked. My dad’s bringing it up this weekend. We’ll have wheels!”

  No one responded. They were all sure that if Jon had wheels, he’d be using those wheels for dates, not transporting his housemates around town. He looked disappointed at their lack of reaction to his news.

  “Listen,” Milo said as they began walking, “if we’d pooled the money we spent on books, we could have bought our own dorm! Then we could kiss Nightingale Hall good-bye. People have been giving me flack about it all day.”

  “Me, too,” Cath said. “I’m not telling anyone where I live from now on. I’ll say I’m camping out behind the gym or something.”

  “Right,” Jon agreed, smiling at Cath. “Maybe I’ll say I live in my car.”

  Jess began leafing through her German book. “Well,” she said ruefully, “I bought used books, but they weren’t that much cheaper.” Closing the book and thrusting it into her backpack, she added, “I just wish someone had warned me about how expensive college was going to be. I would have saved more money instead of throwing it away on trivial things, like food and clothing.”

  Ian helped her adjust the backpack. “Look at it this way. You’ve registered for classes and bought your books. You are now an official college student.” He grinned down at her. “So? You feel any different than you did in high school?”

  “Yeah, I feel a lot poorer!” But as they began walking across campus toward the highway, she realized that she did feel different. Older? No, not really. Maybe … more … free? A little more independent? Out on her own, away from family, responsible, now, for herself. Scary thought, that “responsible” part. But, exciting, too.