Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  “You were outside just now,” Link said to Rain. “Did you see anyone out there?”

  Rain shook his head. “No. But how long have you been here?”

  Reed stared at Rain, startled. He was hinting that Link might have reached in through that window and given the shelves a hefty push? Had he lost his mind?

  “I got here right after Reed was attacked by those books,” Link said, his voice harsh. “Why?”

  Rain shrugged. “Well, you’ve got mud on your boots,” he said, “and there’s no mud out front. Only on the side of the house, where the water drips down from the eaves. Underneath that window is the muddiest spot.”

  Link’s cheeks flamed. “Something you would only know if you’d been outside yourself, right?”

  “I live here,” Rain said coldly. “Of course I’ve been outside.”

  “Boys, boys,” McCoy admonished, “you sound like two little children out in the schoolyard. I can’t imagine why you’re going on so about the window. I told Reed not to open it again, and she won’t, will you, dear?”

  Reed shook her head. But the movement did nothing to clear her mind. Everything around her seemed out of whack. No one was saying or doing the right things. Maybe that bump on the head when she dove underneath the desk had done some serious damage to her brain. Rain and Link each suspected the other of pushing those shelves down on top of her? That was so crazy!

  “I’ll have Rain anchor those bookshelves,” McCoy said as Reed took Link’s elbow and pushed him toward the front door. “You won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

  “Right,” Link muttered as they emerged into full darkness and started down the footpath, “but that doesn’t mean you won’t have something else to worry about.”

  Reed’s ankle was throbbing painfully. Walking on frozen ground didn’t help. “Could you please turn on your flashlight?” Reed asked. “It’s black as coal out here.” When no light appeared, she added, “You did bring a flashlight, didn’t you?”

  He hadn’t. “How was I supposed to know you were going to be buried up to your ears in books when I got here? It was after four. I figured you’d be done and we’d be back on campus before dark.”

  Reed knew he was right. It wasn’t Link’s fault things had been so weird. But they couldn’t walk back to Faculty Row’s streetlights and house lights without something to guide them through the pine grove. “I’ll have to go back in and borrow a flashlight from McCoy,” she said, turning back toward the front door. “Wait here.”

  She was almost to the door when voices raised inside the house slowed her steps. There was music playing, too, the volume high, so she couldn’t quite make out what the voices were saying.

  The higher voice—McCoy’s—fading in and out: “Why are you getting so excited? … shouldn’t matter to you. … mind your own business …”

  So that’s where Poe had learned the expression.

  Then a deeper voice—Rain’s—mixed in with the loud music: “again … won’t stand for it … not this time. … watching you …”

  Reed backed up on the snow-covered path until she was abreast of Link. “They’re … busy,” she said. “We’ll have to wing it. I think I know the path well enough. You walk behind me. It’s only a few minutes to Faculty Row. There’ll be lights there.”

  “How busy can they be?” Link said irritably, although he began following her. “Too busy to lend us a flashlight? I’ll probably trip and break my neck. Wouldn’t both McCoys love that? She’d have new material for another book, and Junior would have a clear field with you.”

  “Quit muttering and watch where you’re going,” Reed called over her shoulder. She had walked this path more often than Link, and moved swiftly, pulling ahead of him rapidly.

  Something he had said stuck in her mind. “New material for another book.” What was it about that statement that set her teeth on edge?

  She really could not see a thing. The path was rutted with frozen snow, and slippery. Every step she took sent knives up her bruised ankle. Twice, she had to grab a tree branch to keep from crashing to the ground.

  She turned to look for Link, didn’t see him, called out, “Hey, slowpoke, hurry up!” But it was too cold to wait for him. All she wanted to do was get back to her room, bathe her sore ankle, wrap herself in a nice, warm robe, and crash on her bed.

  She was at the very edge of the pine grove, only a few yards from Faculty Row, when she heard a noise off to her left. Snow crunching underfoot.

  She turned her head.

  Something was there. Something tall, and black, so that it blended into the trees like a wavering shadow.

  “Link?”

  No answer.

  Reed peered behind her, searching the darkness for some sign of Link. How had she gotten so far ahead of him?

  She glanced back into the grove. The black thing moved closer. Reed quickened her steps, calling out to Link to hurry up. They were almost to Faculty Row.

  The black thing moved closer.

  “Link?” Her voice rose. “Link!”

  Reed’s instinct was to run, but her ankle hurt. And if she kept her eyes on the pine grove, trying to keep track of the shadowy figure, she couldn’t watch where she was going. She’d fall, and the black thing would swoop down upon her …

  The very second that she thought that, the big, black shadow moved closer, lifted its arms wide, like bat wings, and swooped out from behind the trees …

  Reed’s mouth opened deliberately in a loud, shrill scream. “Nooo!”

  The black thing disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, between the trunk of the trees.

  Reed stood frozen on the path, waiting …

  Something grabbed her left arm, and she screamed again.

  “Jeez!” Link cried, “would you give me some warning before you do that again!”

  It was his hand on her arm. Reed almost passed out with relief. “Link! Where have you been?”

  “You’ve got boots on,” he pointed out. “Easier walking. Me, I’m in sneaks. Walking on this stuff in sneaks is like sliding across an ice rink. I fell twice. How come you didn’t wait for me?”

  “I was too cold. Did you see that thing in the woods?”

  “What thing?”

  “That big, black thing. Right there, in the grove. It was headed right for me until I screamed. Didn’t you see it?”

  Link took her hand and began walking. “Ah, Reed,” he said in an amused tone of voice, “have you been reading McCoy’s stuff again?”

  Reed stopped on the path. “I saw it, Link! I can’t believe you didn’t!”

  On Faculty Row, porch lights went on. Doors opened. Heads appeared in doorways. A voice shouted, “Hey, did somebody scream? What’s goin’ on over there?” Heavy feet thudded down wooden steps.

  “I saw something in the grove,” Reed repeated firmly as they began walking again. “Something horrible. I just don’t know what it was.”

  Chapter 15

  “YOU’VE BEEN WORKING in that house too long,” Link said as they emerged onto Faculty Row. “You’re seeing things.”

  “No,” Reed said, “I’m not. I know there was something there.”

  How could he not have seen it? He was on the same path she’d been on.

  A professor in jeans and sweatshirt came running up the street from his house. “What is going on here?” he demanded. “I heard screams.”

  “I thought I saw something in the grove,” Reed answered. “I work for Victoria McCoy. I was just coming back from there, and …”

  But at McCoy’s name, the professor nodded knowingly, as if that told him everything he needed to know. “Stay out of the grove after dark,” he said cryptically, and turned away. “Get on back to campus now,” he called over his shoulder, and jogged back to his house.

  “See?” Link said as they began walking again, “I’m not the only one who thinks McCoy is weird.” When Reed didn’t answer, he added, “If you really think you saw something, maybe it was your friend
Rain’s idea of a joke?”

  “No way. He wouldn’t do that.”

  “How do you know? Am I missing something?” Link stopped her, put his hands on her shoulders, turned her around to face him. “Just how well do you know him?”

  She was still shaken from that awful thing in the woods and he wanted to know about Rain? He had no sense of timing whatsoever.

  “I know him well enough to know he wouldn’t do something like that,” she said firmly. But, she couldn’t help thinking, maybe Link would. To try and scare her away from McCoy’s, maybe. He said he’d fallen on the path. But she didn’t see any snow on the back of his jeans.

  “Look, I don’t want to talk about this now,” Reed said, moving away from him. “I can’t stop thinking about that awful thing, whatever it was, sneaking up on us through the pine grove.”

  “You said the thing looked like a giant bat?” Link said as he caught up with her. “Like in Night Eyes?”

  Reed felt a tremor snake up her spine. “Night Eyes?” One of McCoy’s books.

  “Yep. Just finished it. About the guy who’s a timid little shoe clerk by day and at night he dresses all in black and kills people, then takes them back to this cave he’s got all fixed up like a second home. Sort of a psychotic Batman. He would have looked pretty much like what you said you saw.”

  He’d read Night Eyes? And he had to know that she had read it, too. If he wanted to scare her, he’d know that would be as good a way as any, by pretending to be the creature in the book. But it was such a cruel thing to do. Link wasn’t like that, was he?

  Maybe he was.

  “You okay?” Link asked gently when they reached her room.

  “Yes.” She wasn’t. But she wanted him to leave. She wanted to be alone.

  At last, he left.

  There was a brief message on her desk, hastily scrawled in Tisha’s handwriting. Reed stared at it in disbelief.

  “Karen Overmeyer wants you to call her. She said it’s important.” The number in Baracca was directly below the message.

  Karen Overmeyer? Why was she calling again? Had she suddenly changed her mind about telling Reed what had happened to her at the McCoy house?

  Why?

  Reed didn’t want to dial the number. She was already upset by what had happened in the grove. Listening to Karen would make things worse. And whatever it was that Karen was now willing to share, it couldn’t have anything to do with what had just happened. Karen was two hours away. She couldn’t know anything about it.

  Could she?

  I don’t want to hear what she has to say now, Reed decided, crumpling the message into a tiny ball and dropping it into the wastebasket.

  After a moment, she reached in, picked it up, uncrumpled it, and jotted the number down on her desk blotter. Then she tossed the message back into the wastebasket.

  Reed had just changed into a warm robe when Debrah poked her head in the door. “Where’ve you been?” she asked, coming into the room and plopping down on Tisha’s unmade bed. “I’ve been calling you. How come you’re so late?”

  Reed hesitated. She really didn’t feel like rehashing the episode in the grove. Debrah probably wouldn’t believe her any more than Link had.

  Still, she needed to tell someone. Maybe if she got it all out in the open, it would disappear and wouldn’t haunt her dreams that night.

  She told Debrah about the weird incident in the grove.

  And was relieved—and surprised—when Debrah seemed to believe her.

  “Oh, Reed,” Debrah said sympathetically, “that’s terrible! You must have been scared half to death! Do you have any idea who it was?”

  Reed shook her head. “Didn’t get a good look. And Link didn’t see anything at all.”

  Debrah looked startled. “Link was with you? What was he doing there?”

  “Just came to walk me home.” She told Debrah about the bookshelves and the raven falling.

  But this time, she didn’t get the reaction she wanted.

  There was eagerness in Debrah’s voice as she said, “Honestly, Reed, you really should quit that job.”

  “What?”

  “Well, I mean, after taking a tumble into that well and now, having the shelves fall on you, and then seeing something creepy in the woods … you’d have to be crazy to go back there again.”

  Reed sighed. Debrah clearly had her own agenda. She wasn’t really concerned about Reed’s safety. The very second that Reed announced she was quitting, Debrah would hike on over to McCoy’s so fast, she’d leave skid marks on the path.

  Jude arrived then, and Lilith was right behind him. “It’s sleeting out,” Lilith said. “We’re stuck with cafeteria food tonight.”

  Debrah very quickly filled them in on what Reed had told her.

  Jude’s comment was, “If you’d been in McCoy’s office showing her my manuscripts like I asked you to, you wouldn’t have been anywhere near those shelves when they fell.”

  And Lilith said coyly, “I’m sure if Rain had been home then, he would have raced to your rescue.”

  They all have their own agendas, Reed thought, annoyed and a little hurt. Jude wants to use me to get to McCoy, Lilith wants me to get involved with Rain so she can have Link, and Debrah wants me to quit so she can take my place.

  She almost wished she had never started the fan club in the first place. They weren’t nearly as interested in McCoy as she was. They would never understand what drew her to the house again and again, in spite of everything.

  “Link thinks someone pushed those shelves,” she said, watching Debrah’s face. Maybe Debrah would change her mind about wanting the job if she thought there was evil afoot in the McCoy house.

  Debrah never blinked. “You said you were looking through the books on the shelves, right? I noticed when we were there that a good, strong breeze would send those shelves crashing to the ground. Nobody pushed them. Nobody had to. They just fell.”

  You sure notice a lot, thought Reed.

  A few minutes later, Link returned to see what everybody was doing about dinner. He took a seat next to Lilith, on the floor.

  Lilith bent her head close to Link’s to tell him something. Her halo of blonde hair reminded Reed of the newspaper clippings. The girl in that picture had been blonde, too. “Does anyone remember a girl named Sunny Bigelow?” Reed asked.

  Lilith nodded. “I do. She was the R.A. for Devereaux. She died last fall, here on campus. I think she drowned in the river or something. I didn’t know her. But Jude did, didn’t you, Jude? I thought I saw you with her a couple of times.”

  Jude looked up. “I didn’t really know her. Saw her a few times, that’s all. She worked for McCoy.” A sour expression crossed his face as he added, “But she wouldn’t show McCoy my stuff, either. They never found out what really happened to her, did they?”

  “I don’t think so,” Reed could easily picture the scenario between Jude and Sunny Bigelow. He’d found out she was working for McCoy and had made a big play for her. Then, when she refused to show his manuscripts to McCoy, he’d dumped her faster than she could say, “Jude Noble is an ambitious jerk.”

  “Jude,” she said, “why didn’t you mention Sunny Bigelow when I told you I was going to work for McCoy?”

  “Well, she wasn’t working when she died,” he answered. “I know McCoy was questioned, but the police let her go. So, no problem, right?”

  When Reed didn’t say anything, Jude added, “If I had told you about Bigelow, would you have chickened out and let me or Debrah or Lilith have the job?”

  No, she wouldn’t have. Still, it seemed odd that he hadn’t mentioned that he knew someone else who had worked for McCoy.

  “That girl died so early in the semester,” Lilith said. “I only heard little bits and pieces of what happened. Things were so crazy then.”

  Like things aren’t nuts now? Reed thought.

  But she knew she was going back to the McCoy house. It was as if there were two halves to her. One half was te
rrified of returning to the pine grove and that house. The other half couldn’t stay away. There was something … unfinished … at the McCoy house.

  And it was that half … the curious, intrigued part of her … that was winning.

  She would go back.

  But she didn’t tell Link that.

  The next day, Rain was waiting for her at the edge of the pine grove. “McCoy didn’t want you walking to the house alone, so she sent me out to escort you.” He smiled at Reed. “I tried to tell her you don’t need an escort, but she wouldn’t listen. She never does,” he added ruefully. He bent his head to peer into Reed’s face. “You’re not nervous about coming back here, are you? After the bookshelves attacking you?”

  Reed almost laughed. The bookshelves weren’t the whole story. He hadn’t heard about the black thing last night. “No,” Reed lied. “I’m not nervous. Should I be?” she asked, only half-teasing.

  He didn’t smile. “No,” he said firmly, “you shouldn’t. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Instead of relieving Reed’s tension, that made her more uneasy. Was he admitting that something bad could happen to her if he weren’t there to prevent it? Was he talking about the attack on the path last night? Or was he referring to something else?

  “Do you remember Sunny Bigelow?” she asked. Because she had to.

  He nodded as they made their way up the path toward the house. “Sure. She worked for my mother, but not for very long. McCoy really liked her, though. More than she did the others. We tried to help the police, but we really didn’t know anything. Bigelow wasn’t working the day it happened.”

  “But it was an accident, right?” Her voice must have sounded more anxious than she intended, because Rain turned to her on the path and put a hand on her shoulder.

  “You are worried,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry. I was hoping that wouldn’t happen.”

  Then, before Reed could comment on the strangeness of that remark, the door flew open and Victoria McCoy, red-faced with anger, cried, “Someone has been stealing things from my house!” And she was staring straight at Reed.