Dark Moon (Nightmare Hall)

by Diane Hoh

  The sneer deepened. “Ha! That’s a big, fat lie! If I’d told you, straight out, you would have laughed your stupid head off. Stop patronizing me, Eve. I don’t like it.”

  “How did you kill your mother?” Eve said.

  Serena froze. “What?”

  “I said, how did you kill your mother? You said that night on The Snake that you’d killed her, and I want to know how. It’s not like I’m going to tell anyone. I mean, you’re not planning on letting me out of here alive, are you?” She had said the right thing. It had shocked Serena, and she wasn’t paying as much attention to Eve’s movements. Another step, and then another, her feet sliding quietly on the hardwood floor.

  “I … I wished her dead.” Serena’s voice gathered strength. “That’s how I knew I had the power. That was the first time I ever used it.”

  “You wished it?” Eve’s words were heavy with skepticism.

  “See? There you go again! Yes, I wished it, and it happened. So you can scoff all you want, but I wished it and it happened, and I wished it another time, too, and it happened. Carolyn was supposed to be my friend, my best friend, but she betrayed me, so I had to use the power on her. And it worked.”

  “Why didn’t it work on me?” Eve was so close to the window now, the lace curtain brushed against her right arm. Serena didn’t seem to notice. “I mean, I didn’t die in the Mirror Maze, and I didn’t die on The Snake. Maybe your power has blown a fuse.”

  Furious, Serena swung the bat. It slammed into Eve’s wrist with a sickening crack. She screamed in pain, and bent double, clutching the injured arm. The blow shocked her. She hadn’t been expecting it. “Oh, God, Serena, what did you do that for?”

  “Stop making fun of me!” Serena screamed, her face a mask of rage.

  When the bright light of the moon suddenly dimmed slightly, darkening the room, Eve couldn’t believe it. There hadn’t been a cloud in the sky. But now …

  Serena noticed it, too. She ran to the window in the other end of the wall, and looked up at the sky.

  When she turned around, she was smiling.

  Beaming, really, Eve thought, she’s beaming. There’s a shadow on the moon and she sees it as a signal.

  So, even though Eve was dizzy with pain and hadn’t planned what she was going to do or how to go about it, when Serena, still smiling, lifted the bat a second time and broke into a run across the attic floor, headed straight for Eve, Eve had no choice. She dove out the open window and tumbled onto the fire escape.

  It let out a screech of protest when her body hit the top landing, and groaned another as she tumbled heavily down the first three steps. The rusty metal stairs trembled with the sudden weight, and when Eve sat up and shook her head to clear it and looked up to see if Serena was following, her eyes widened with horror.

  The bolts holding the ancient fire escape to the wall of Nightingale House were pulling loose. There were only four, giant-sized, fastened into the brick.

  Only now they weren’t fastened. Two of them had already pulled loose and were hanging limply from the holes in the metal railing of the stairs. As the fire escape began to sway slightly, swinging Eve ever so gently, it pulled and tugged on the two remaining bolts which, Eve noticed with a sinking of her heart, were already loose in their holes.

  Serena appeared in the window, her disheveled hair hanging over her shoulders. Her first glance was toward the sky, where the moon remained behind the shadow of a small cloud. Then, smiling, she looked down at Eve, crouched on the swaying iron stairs, her uninjured hand clinging to the railing, the other hand with its broken wrist lying uselessly in her lap.

  “Don’t come out here,” Eve warned. “It’s loose. Any more weight and the whole thing will go. Stay there, Serena, or we’ll both be killed.”

  “Well, you will,” Serena said blithely, swinging a leg over the windowsill, “but I won’t. I already told you, nothing bad will happen to me. Especially now. Don’t you see that shadow up there, Eve?” glancing up again. “The moon is full now, and that’s when I’m strongest. Not only that, but there’s a shadow, too. That’s the signal it’s ready to give me whatever I want, just like it did before. And what I want most, Eve, is you dead. So that’s what I’m going to have.”

  Eve had no choice. Later, she would tell herself that over and over again for a very long time, and others would tell her that, too. I had no choice, she would repeat again and again, until she finally believed it herself.

  Serena, still armed with the powerful baseball bat, swung the other leg over the sill and prepared to drop down onto the fire escape.

  And Eve shook it. With her one good hand, she gripped the railing and then she pushed her body against the railing with all her strength, sending the iron stairs swinging crazily to the right.

  So that when Serena let her body drop, the fire escape that had been there only seconds before, directly beneath her feet, was no longer there.

  She missed it only by an inch or two.

  But she did miss it.

  And went screaming to her death.

  Eve, so sickened that she fell to her knees, caught only a glimpse of Serena’s face as she plummeted straight down four stories.

  But that glimpse was enough. What Eve saw was a look of total betrayal.

  And she knew, as she collapsed in a heap on the metal stairs, that she hadn’t caused that look. It wasn’t Eve, after all, that Serena felt had betrayed her. It wasn’t Eve that Serena had expected to save her. And although it was Eve who had swung the fire escape out of Serena’s way, it wasn’t even Eve she blamed for her own death. It was the Moon.

  Epilogue

  “CAN’T SEE THE MOON tonight,” Garth said quietly into Eve’s hair, which hung loose and full around her shoulders. “Too cloudy. Think that’s why everyone’s having such a good time? The music seems better tonight, people are laughing louder, talking more. Everyone seems more relaxed.”

  Eve lifted her head to look up at him. “That isn’t because we can’t see the moon, Garth. That’s because Serena is gone.” She rested her head against his chest again as they continued dancing on the main street of Twin Falls. “Poor Serena. She just totally lost it when her mother died, and no one ever even knew it.”

  Andie and Alfred danced by and waved. Although the moon no longer illuminated the streets and buildings, the crowd of dancers, and the river flowing off to the left, Eve decided Garth was right. Saturday night was much nicer than Friday. The air felt warmer, the breeze gentler, the crowd friendlier.

  A deep pang of regret stabbed her. If only …

  But what good did that do?

  “I wish I’d known what was going on in Serena’s head,” she said quietly. “Maybe we could have helped her. It’s so hard to believe she really thought the moon was guiding her, helping her.”

  “You heard Dr. Litton,” Garth said, steering her expertly through the crowd. “Serena wasn’t getting any power from the moon. It was her guilt that fueled her. She really believed she had caused her mother’s death, and then later, that friend of hers. It’s weird, but there it is. The important thing,” he added, giving her a quick hug, “is that you’re okay. The fire escape at Nightmare Hall isn’t in one piece, but you are. Well, you will be, once that wrist heals,” he said, looking at the cast on Eve’s arm. “Think you can put it all out of your mind, just for tonight, and have a good time? And by the way, your hair looks fantastic.”

  “Thanks.” Eve thought for a minute. The first thing she was going to do when she had recovered fully was change her major to graphic arts. She had survived this terrible week. She could survive Nell Forsythe’s anger. She raised her head again. “Yes,” she said, “I can put it out of my mind. For tonight. But tomorrow, I need to think about some of the things Serena said up there in the attic. Maybe some of it made sense.”

  “Okay,” Garth said agreeably. “Tomorrow, though, right?”

  “Yes,” she said clearly. “Tomorrow.”

  Turn the page to continue reading
from the Nightmare Hall Series

  Prologue

  THE ROAR OF THE motorcycle’s engine is so loud it can be heard from a great distance on this still, quiet spring night. An elderly woman named Myra pruning her favorite rose bush, the blooms pink with a faint hint of vanilla in their unfolding petals, lifts her head at the sound, and the straw hat she is wearing over her graying hair tilts slightly backward, exposing a lined forehead above slightly puzzled blue eyes.

  Two houses up the street in the small, pleasant town of Twin Falls not far from Salem University’s campus, the little Johnson boy, just turned seven and proud of it, fights to maintain his balance on the brand-new, shiny red and silver bicycle given him the night before at his birthday celebration. He loves motorcycles, and when he hears the unmistakable roar coming from somewhere behind him, he loses his concentration, then his balance, and topples off the bike. It rolls forward several feet, and then quietly lies down on its side near the curb, as if waiting for the little boy to catch up.

  Although he has scraped his knee, drawing blood, the boy is too interested in the possible approach of a real, live motorcycle to cry. He pulls himself to his feet and stands in the middle of the street, eyes bright with anticipation.

  It is twilight. The street, its neat white or brick houses and the fully leafed, large trees lining the avenue, are all bathed in faint purple shadows as darkness begins to silently swallow Twin Falls, gobbling it up block by block.

  Any vehicle on the road at this hour is required to turn on its lights. That is the law.

  But, though the roar of the bike increases in volume and intensity, the woman tending her roses and the little boy in the street see no sign of a light approaching.

  If he had seen a light, the little Johnson boy would have moved out of the street and onto the curb to watch the motorcycle fly by, and would have counted himself lucky to see such a sight.

  Myra, puzzled by the loud roar of the motorcycle when she can see no sign of the vehicle itself, rises to her feet and steps out into the street to peer down the avenue, thinking perhaps the roar isn’t that of a motorcycle, after all, but someone’s power lawnmower. She has seen the little Johnson boy in the street trying to ride his new bicycle, and wonders if she should call to him to move to the curb, just in case. But his parents might not like that, might think she’s just being nosy.

  She does see a light then, but it’s confusing, because it’s a double set of headlights, coming toward her end of the street. She may be old, but she knows perfectly well that motorcycles don’t have two headlights.

  Then what is that dreadful roar, so loud it could easily finish off what’s left of her hearing?

  The cycle appears out of nowhere, only slightly illuminated by the headlights of the car still some distance behind it. It is a huge Harley-Davidson with, it’s true, no headlight at all, and only one rider. It swoops with a roar out of the purple shadows, catching the little Johnson boy by surprise. He wavers, his eyes widening in astonishment, and then that amazing self-protective instinct kicks in and he dives sideways, out of the path of the oncoming motorcycle.

  But the boy misjudges the distance between street and curb and, as the rose-tending woman up the street watches in horror, the little Johnson boy misses the grassy area just beyond the curb, and falls too soon, his head slamming into the cement curb with a deadly thwacking sound.

  Then there are three more sounds, each one breaking the early evening silence in a different way. There is the triumphant roar of the motorcycle as it races away. There is the shrill scream of Myra as she rushes across the street to aid the injured boy, and then the agonized shriek of brakes as the approaching car tries desperately to avoid hitting her.

  It fails.

  The sound when the car hits her is quieter than the earlier sound of the boy’s head thwacking into the curb. It is a softer noise, almost gentle as the sedan with the shrieking brakes collides with the woman, knocking her backward and under the car. It keeps going for a few more feet, dragging its victim along with it. When the car finally slides to a complete halt, the hem of a blue denim skirt clings to the bottom of the left front wheel.

  Hearing the odd assortment of sounds from inside his house, the woman’s husband rises from his leather recliner in front of the television set and hurries to the front door, opening it and calling, “Myra? Myra?”

  The little Johnson boy lies perfectly still, his legs limp in the street, his head on the curb. A small pool of bright red, looking very like the round shiny red apples he often drew in first grade, forms beneath his skull.

  Still, he will survive and go into second grade in September.

  But Myra’s pink and vanilla tinted roses will have to be pruned by someone else if they are to retain their customary glory. As the coroner tells her grief-stricken husband later, “She was dead before she hit the ground. Heart attack. Sorry, Milt.”

  The Twin Falls police will hunt for the Harley-Davidson. But, as one of the officers on the scene tells the grieving Milt, “Far as we know, the biker isn’t guilty of much. He didn’t hit anyone. Wasn’t speeding, according to witnesses. They said the bike didn’t have a light on, and we could ticket him for that, if we find him. But we’re sure not gonna hang him for that.”

  Alone in her room on the campus of Salem University, Echo Glenn hears the roar of a motorcycle as it approaches campus and thinks, What a racket!

  Then she returns to her studying.

  Chapter 1

  “WELL, I DON’T CARE what anyone says, I think it’s scary,” Delores Jean Cutter said. Immersed to her neck in the bubbling whirlpool in Salem University’s infirmary, she shook her head. Dark, short, hair curled damply around her pink cheeks. “I mean, that little boy could have been killed. And that old woman was. All because of some idiot on a motorcycle! Echo, could you please hand me another towel? This one’s soggy.”

  “That’s because you’ve been waving it around, too close to the whirlpool bubbles, while you were talking, Deejay,” Echo said. But she got up from the stool where she’d been sitting with an open book in her lap, took a thick, white towel from the tall, wide supply closet and slung it carelessly around Deejay’s shoulders. Her part-time job at the infirmary required her to see that the people who used the whirlpool had what they needed. Sometimes she felt like an attendant at a country club, but the job brought in needed funds. Beggars couldn’t be choosers. “The article in the campus paper said the biker didn’t do anything wrong except forget to turn his light on. He didn’t hit that woman or the little boy.”

  Deejay Cutter slapped at the whirling water with the flat of her hand and said emphatically, “But it wouldn’t have happened if the motorcycle had had its light on, Echo!” The other two girls in the whirlpool all nodded agreement. “And why are you defending the guy, anyway?”

  Echo had no idea why she was taking the side of the biker. She didn’t even know who he was. No one did.

  “Well, at least the attack happened in town,” Ruthanne Widdoes said, standing up and stepping stiffly out of the tub. Ruthanne had arthritis, a painful disease unusual in someone so young, and spent more time than anyone else in the whirlpool. She was very tall and thin and had told Echo that her pediatrician had said she’d “grown too fast.” “He made it sound like it was my fault,” she had complained to Echo one day as she stepped gingerly into the tub. “Like I did it on purpose.” Now, Ruthanne added, “It’s not like there’s a wild biker loose right here on campus.”

  Echo didn’t say anything, but she was remembering the sound she’d heard the night before when she was studying. The unmistakable roar of a motorcycle’s engine arriving on campus. But that didn’t mean anything. There were a few bikes on campus. They were cheaper to run and easier to maneuver in traffic than a car.

  “Well, I just hope he stays in town,” Deejay said. “I don’t like motorcycles. Too noisy.” Deejay’s problem was tennis elbow. Still athletically inclined, she had switched to swimming, saying it was a form of “hydro
therapy,” like the whirlpool, only not as warm and bubbly.

  Marilyn Sexton nodded agreement. Tall and blonde and as shy and quiet as Deejay was talkative, Marilyn had what Echo thought of as “sad eyes.” The victim of a tragic house fire when she was a teenager, her legs and arms not only pained her from time to time, they were badly scarred. Marilyn never wore shorts or tops without long sleeves. Echo was certain that only Marilyn’s roommate and her whirlpool room companions had ever seen Marilyn’s cruel scars.

  The three girls were very different. Deejay was popular and outgoing, Marilyn shy and quiet, Ruthanne a little brusque but very capable and efficient. In spite of her pain, Ruthanne accomplished a lot on campus, heading fund raisers, chairing committees, and making the dean’s list. The three seemed to have little in common. Echo was sure they would never have become friends if not for their shared need for the whirlpool’s soothing waters.

  Echo tolerated the trio, but she didn’t consider them close friends. She had no close friends. Her choice.

  “Are you going to the picnic tomorrow afternoon, Echo?” Marilyn asked as she climbed out of the tub.

  “No.” Picnic? An entire Saturday afternoon spent in the hot sun, with ants nibbling at her ankles and people throwing water balloons at each other? No, thanks.

  “You’re so antisocial, Echo,” Ruthanne accused as she toweled off her long, skinny legs. “You really don’t like people, do you?”

  “That’s not true!” Echo protested halfheartedly. But she knew it was almost true. She wasn’t even sure she liked these three, although she had talked to them more this year than to anyone else on campus. But that was solely because of her job at the infirmary. She spent almost no time with them away from the whirlpool room. It’s not that they were that bad; Deejay was fun, Marilyn was nice enough, and Ruthanne, when she wasn’t complaining about pain, could carry on a very intelligent conversation.