Dark Moon (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  The important thing now was to call an emergency meeting of the committee and head on over to the administration building to see if the celebration was being canceled.

  It wasn’t.

  When the cause of the incident had been explained to the dean, she said thoughtfully, “This event has been planned for some time. You’ve all worked very hard on it, and its success is important to the university. In spite of this very unfortunate accident, I believe the celebration must go on.”

  There were nods of approval all around. Eve’s head didn’t move.

  “I have spoken with one of the doctors at the hospital in town,” the dean continued. Her expression suddenly became very bleak. “There was nothing they could do for Alice. That is tragic. But canceling the planned events will not bring her back. I have also spoken with her parents. Although they are distraught, they have assured me that Alice herself would have wanted the celebration to continue. Therefore, I have decided that we will dedicate the entire week to her memory, and use a portion of the carnival funds to establish a scholarship fund in her name. I believe her parents would like that.”

  Still Eve said nothing. Her eyes were focused on a large, round clock on the wall behind the dean’s desk. Only two o’clock in the afternoon. The parade had begun at noon. Shouldn’t it be later than it was? Shouldn’t it be, like, days later? If it were, for instance, next Sunday now, the whole Founders’ Day event would be behind her. She could lie on her bed in her room and relax, knowing that she had nothing more important to do that day than call her mother, as she always did on Sunday.

  But it wasn’t next Sunday. It was this Sunday. Only the first day of the festivities. Hard to believe now, that her biggest concern last night when she finally fell asleep had been that it might rain, ruining the parade. It hadn’t rained on her parade. What had happened was worse. Much worse.

  “By the way,” the dean added, “I have some good news. Kevin’s injuries are painful, but not that serious. He’ll be back to help you and the committee by Tuesday, Wednesday at the latest. That should cheer you up some.”

  It helped a little, knowing that Kevin would be back later in the week. But it didn’t help a lot. Eve still felt as if a heavy black cloak had draped itself over her shoulders. Because something she had never once thought to write down on her List of Possible Problems, had happened.

  Someone had died.

  It was only the first day of the celebration, and someone had died.

  And there were still six-and-a-half days to go.

  Chapter 3

  THE FOUNDERS’ DAY COMMITTEE returned silently to the carnival site. All were visibly shaken.

  Eve glanced around her, struggling to organize her thoughts. The debris left by the horse’s rampage had disappeared, and the scene seemed very normal. The sunflower-yellow Ferris wheel was revolving swiftly now. It was only half-full. Screams of fear and excitement echoed from the precariously swaying seats as they reached the very top, high above the campus. More shrieks came from wilder rides such as Devil’s Elbow, Hell on Wheels, Space Demon, and The Snake. People were buying popcorn and cotton candy and hot dogs and cold drinks, while others moved from the dart booth to the shooting gallery and bottle toss booths, seeking to win a giant panda bear or a small portable tape player. Balloons in vivid colors trailed along behind small children. There were already half a dozen of the round globes floating up into the sky, and more would join them soon enough as additional strings escaped small hands.

  There were shocked eyes in some faces, muted whispers of horrors from others, but it seemed clear to Eve that those who had been affected most severely by the disaster had left campus, leaving behind those who were dismayed but determined not to let anything ruin their day. There was now a good-sized crowd, and newcomers were visible arriving at the entrance to campus.

  The Founders’ Day celebration would continue.

  The scene in front of Eve looked like an ordinary carnival site on an ordinary Sunday afternoon.

  But what she was seeing instead was blood pooling under Alice’s broken body. Instead of the music and the laughter, she heard again the sharp snap of Kevin’s ribs cracking.

  Eve knew she would hear and see those things for a long time.

  It shouldn’t look normal, Eve thought, moving toward the cotton candy booth to make sure all was in order. How can everything look so ordinary when someone died just a little while ago?

  Suppose she’d been right about Alice’s death being a bad omen? Suppose it was only the beginning … ?

  Stop that! she commanded herself sharply. Stop it right now. It wasn’t an omen. There’s no such thing as an omen. You’re being silly and stupid. The best way to put what’s happened out of your mind, at least for now, is to keep busy. And with Kevin in the infirmary, there’s plenty to do. So get to it, girl!

  It wasn’t easy. Shock and sadness weighed her down. Every step she took, every movement she made, was an effort at first. But after a while, it became automatic, as exercising her responsibilities always did.

  Alfred wouldn’t leave her side, repeatedly asking her anxiously if she was mad at him because he hadn’t helped with the horse.

  Telling him, “No, Alfred, if I were mad, I’d say so,” she sent him on an errand and went into the cotton candy booth. She had just dipped a finger into one of the huge sacks of sugar piled against the back wall and was tasting it when an amused voice from the other side of the counter said, “Eating up all the profits? That’s not fiscally sound.”

  Flushing, Eve looked up into dark brown eyes that seemed to be laughing at her. She stood up very straight. “I was just checking to make sure they sent us the right thing,” she said stiffly. “Besides, I didn’t realize someone was spying on me!”

  The boy was tall and good-looking. Not gorgeous. But nice cheekbones and very intelligent eyes. Thick, dark, curly hair, slightly damp across his forehead. His white T-shirt bore the words, DRAPER’S CAMERA SHOP, TWIN FALLS. Underneath that, in smaller letters, Eve read, Come In and See What Develops.

  This was the guy she’d seen at Draper’s. Which meant, he was the clown who had tamed Alice’s horse.

  The sharpness of her remark erased the laughter from his eyes. “I just wanted to see how that girl was,” he said, using the same brusque tone of voice she’d used. “The one thrown by the horse.”

  It was him, all right. He looked very different in his T-shirt and cutoffs, his face free of the thick white makeup, but she would have known that voice anywhere. Even if the tone he’d just used was very different from the soothing voice that had quieted Shadrack.

  Chagrin washed over her. He had saved a lot of people and not even waited to be thanked, and now she’d been rude to him.

  She came out of the booth quickly, saying, “I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I didn’t recognize you, but I’m glad you came back. No one got a chance to thank you. I’m Eve Forsythe. And I thank you.”

  His eyes thawed again, and he smiled. “No problem. You mean I should have hung around, maybe got my picture in the local paper?” He gestured toward the camera slung over his shoulder. “Couldn’t happen. The paper’s photographer was otherwise occupied at the time. Had some crazed horseflesh on his hands.”

  “You? You take pictures for the newspaper in Twin Falls?” He looked awfully young to be a professional news photographer.

  “Right. Garth Draper. My dad owns the local camera shop. I run it part-time, and work for the paper as a sideline. I mean,” he added, shrugging, “it’s not like a heck of a lot goes on in Twin Falls that requires a full-time newspaper photographer.” His expression sobered quickly. “Not counting today, of course.”

  “Did you take pictures?” Eve asked quickly, picturing the earlier, horrifying scene splashed across the front page of the Twin Falls Gazette. No one who saw it would come anywhere near the carnival.

  But he shook his head. “I took a few of the general scene, and there will be a story. I saw our ace reporter, Maxine Trembla
y, jotting down notes. But there won’t be any pictures of the girl or the other people who were hurt. No shattered bodies, no bloodied flesh. I’m not into that stuff.”

  Eve breathed a sigh of relief. Still, the article would be bad publicity for the Founders’ Day celebration. Would they be able to overcome it?

  They had to. Not just because she couldn’t stand the thought of screwing up. There was that scholarship in Alice’s name. That was important.

  “So, how is she? That girl?” Garth asked as they began to move away from the steadily increasing crowd at the cotton candy booth.

  “Oh. She … she didn’t make it. She had a severe head injury. Serena and the others tried to help, but it was too late.” Too late …

  He paled. “Geez, I’m sorry. Was she a friend of yours?”

  “I knew her. She was in my parapsychology class.” Eve hesitated, then added, “It’s not that she was a really good friend of mine or anything. But she was nice. And I’ve never seen anything like that before. I still can’t believe it. And then,” she spread her hands to include the scene around her, “to see everything going on as if nothing happened, well, it just seems too weird, that’s all.” She leaned against the Ferris wheel’s ticket booth and looked up at him. “The thing is, I’m sort of in charge, me and the committee, and I’d have canceled it if I’d had my way. But the dean and Alice’s parents thought the celebration should go on, so here we are.”

  “I can see how you’d feel,” he said, nodding. “But canceling all of this …” he glanced around as Eve had done earlier … “would be no small feat. And it really wouldn’t do that girl any good, would it?”

  “No.” Eve felt depression sliding over her. If only the sun would come out. But it was almost evening now, and the sky hadn’t brightened. It looked more like rain now than it had before. Another bad omen?

  To change the subject, she said, “Do you go to Salem?”

  “Did go. Two years. But last spring the dean and I came to an understanding. We both agreed it would be mutually satisfying for both parties if I brought my matriculation to a speedy conclusion.”

  “You were kicked out?”

  There was such horror in Eve’s voice, that Garth laughed. “Not exactly. We … the photography department, that is, were putting on a photo exhibit. Contemporary photographers, starring some of my idols. We had it all set up, and all of a sudden, out of nowhere, comes this uptight alum who threw a fit over the nudes. And this alum donates many, many big bucks to Salem University. I went to the dean. She wrestled with the problem, and took my side. Said the nudes would stay. She’s okay, the dean.”

  “If the dean agreed with you, why were you thrown out?”

  “I told you, I wasn’t thrown out. The dean said the photos stayed, so the alum went to the board of trustees. The board wasn’t about to cut off that kind of heavy-duty funding. The photos came down. Nothing the dean could do. But I was pissed. I got together a ragtag band of protestors and we blocked the entrance to the art building. I said we wouldn’t move until the photos went back up. The board said they weren’t going back up. So Don Quixote here pulled this stupid grandstand play and shouted, for the whole campus to hear, that either the photos went back up or I left.” He laughed without rancor. “I left. A few credits short of my associate degree in photography.”

  “I’m sorry,” Eve said. She didn’t know what else to say.

  He shrugged. “Don’t be. I figured, anything Salem hadn’t taught me about photography, my dad could teach me. I was right. Before he retired and bought the camera shop, he was a pro. Worked for the best regional magazine in Texas. Anything he doesn’t know about taking pictures probably isn’t worth knowing.”

  Serena, Andie, and Alfred arrived to tell Eve that everything seemed to be “going okay” and to comment on the size of the crowd. “I know it’s weird,” Andie said, “but it looks like we’ll do okay tonight. Amazing! I thought when word spread through town about that horse going crazy, no one would show up.”

  Alfred nodded. “Me, too. I guess people figure it was a freak thing that couldn’t possibly happen twice, and aren’t worried. That’s nice for us, I guess.”

  Eve said nothing. No matter how successful the Founders’ Day celebration was, Alice would still be dead.

  Andie looked up at the sky. “I wish it weren’t so cloudy. The carnival might look more interesting under a full moon.”

  “Weird things happen when there’s a full moon,” Alfred said sullenly. His eyes, too, were surveying Garth, but with more resentment than interest. “Suicides, murders, you hear about them all the time on the news when the moon is full.”

  “Alfred, you’re as superstitious as I am,” Serena said. “Funny. You don’t look like the type. You look so … so practical.”

  Alfred must have considered that a compliment, because he smiled.

  “Alfred’s right, though,” Andie said after Eve had introduced Garth. “I’ve heard that a full moon makes people do weird things. It has something to do with the tides.”

  “There’s no ocean in Twin Falls, Andie,” Eve said dryly. They weren’t going to start discussing paranormal junk again, were they?

  “Doesn’t have to be,” Andie replied. “The whole phenomenon of the full moon’s effect is planetary, not regional. We’re all affected by it. Ask Dr. Litton.”

  Dr. Litton was their parapsychology professor. Eve found her fun and interesting, even though most of the stuff she talked about was totally off the wall.

  Alfred declared starvation, as he frequently did, and Eve was grateful when Serena and Andie dragged him off to the hot dog booth, leaving her alone with Garth. That was fine with her.

  “That guy’s really hung up on you,” Garth commented when the trio was out of hearing. “Can’t blame him, even if you do wear your hair like my sixth-grade teacher.”

  Eve’s left hand instinctively flew to her barrette. “What’s wrong with my hair?” she said testily.

  “Nothing wrong with it. It’s great hair. So why are you holding it prisoner? Makes you look uptight and nervous. My sixth-grade teacher was very uptight.”

  “Maybe I am uptight and nervous!” she snapped. “It’s been a crummy day, in case you’ve forgotten. And why did you pick me to ask about Alice, anyway? Why didn’t you just ask someone else?”

  “Because you were the girl who was running after the horse when I stopped it. So I figured you’d know what had happened to its rider.”

  Startled, Eve looked up, one hand still selfconsciously fingering her barrette. He had remembered her? Out of all that confusion and chaos, he had remembered what she looked like? That pleasing thought was quickly followed by the fact that he had remembered her as looking “nervous and uptight.”

  Well, she was nervous. Who wouldn’t be? Why wasn’t everyone?

  “By the way,” he added quickly, “I really liked my sixth-grade teacher. It was her first year of teaching, and she was uptight. But she was also the prettiest woman in the building.”

  Eve smiled.

  “So,” he said, relaxing, “do you have any major duties that you have to take care of right now?”

  “No. I don’t think so. Everything’s okay, I guess, if you can call it that after what happened.” Distant thunder sounded just then, and a streak of silver lightning lit up the purpled, twilight sky. Eve groaned. “I really don’t want it to rain. If it’ll just hold off until ten o’clock, I swear I’ll never complain about rain again as long as I live.”

  “Sure, you will. But since standing out here watching the sky for bad weather doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, let’s go check out the Mirror Maze.”

  Eve smiled again. “Sure. I watched them set the whole thing up yesterday. Looked very confusing to me. Might be just what I need to take my mind off … everything. As long as we don’t get lost in there.”

  “We won’t get lost. I was an Eagle Scout. Could find my way out of anything, with or without a compass.” He took her hand. “Let’s
go exploring.”

  Another bolt of lightning lit up the sky as Garth led Eve toward the Mirror Maze, and the thunderclap that followed sounded ominously close.

  Chapter 4

  I KNOW YOU’RE UP there, Moon, even though you’re hiding. It doesn’t matter how many clouds are in the night sky, I can always feel your presence. And you’re watching, aren’t you? Watching to see what happens, watching to see when and how I’ll need you.

  Well, I will need you, and very soon. I didn’t need your help today. That was something anyone could have done. Simple. Requiring no more power than a sneaky little movement on my part. No one was paying any attention.

  And I can do other things on my own. Little things.

  But when it comes to the big stuff, I’ll have to use the power, and I expect you to help, like you always do. They all think it’s a coincidence that there’s a full moon just as the celebration begins. But it’s not. I planned it that way. I knew I’d need your help, so I used the power to make sure the dates chosen were the right ones.

  And now I need to save up all my energy for the really important things.

  But you will help, won’t you? Like you always do? I know that much of my power comes from you. I don’t know how or why that’s so, but I know that it is. If the celebration had taken place when you were just a tiny little sliver of silver, I don’t know what I would have done. Everything would have been ruined.

  They laugh at us, you know. They make jokes about any kind of special power. They say there is no such thing. Not Doctor Litton, though. She believes. I can tell. But the rest of them don’t. Their crude jokes make me sick! Sick and furious! How dare they? How dare they ridicule something just because they haven’t experienced it?

  They will now, though, won’t they? They will definitely experience the power. By the time this week is over, all of them will realize that you don’t have to understand something to believe in it. They’ll know there are things in this world that can’t be explained.