Captives (Nightmare Hall)
Read Captives (Nightmare Hall) Online
Authors: Diane Hoh
Nightmare Hall
Diane Hoh
Prologue
H
E JUST KEEPS TALKING
and talking and talking. His mouth flaps open and shut, open and shut, like that dumb goldfish I had when I was eight instead of the puppy I really wanted. Every time I think he’s finally going to shut up and let me talk, he opens his mouth again.
He never lets
me
talk. Loves the sound of his own voice too much. But he’s getting paid to
listen,
isn’t he? Isn’t that what a shrink is supposed to do?
“Let me talk!” I scream at him, and he looks up at me like I’ve lost my mind.
Oh, that’s funny. That’s really funny. Of course I’ve lost my mind, or I wouldn’t be in this stupid office in the first place with the eminent Dr. Milton Leo, would I?
“Now, now,” he says, “there’s no need to shout” He lays aside his notebook, sits up straighter in his chair, and I can see something in his eyes that I’ve never seen before.
Fear.
He’s
afraid of
me!
What a rush! Mr. A-Am-In-Control-Here-At-All-Times is not so cool now, is he? All because of one tiny little shout.
I like the effect so much, I decide to shout some more. And once I start, I can’t stop. I shout and I shout I tell him he’s a stupid jerk who doesn’t know the first thing about psychiatry, that he’s the one who needs the shrink, not me. I shout that if he tells me one more time I have to take responsibility for my own actions, I’m going to hit him with that big gold lamp on the table beside his left elbow.
And then that’s what I do.
I don’t mean to. It’s not something I think about ahead of time. But the lamp is sitting right there beside him and it looks so heavy and so solid and I can’t resist it.
He was supposed to help me, and he didn’t.
I think the reason he doesn’t move out of the way in time is he can’t believe it’s happening. Not to him. That’s what I see in his face as I lunge for the lamp, grab it off the table, and bring it down hard on the left side of his head. I see astonishment in those dark, cold eyes behind the glasses. Not me, he’s thinking.
So much blood. I expected ice-water to flow from that coldhearted creep, but it’s blood, all right.
I feel bad for Tanner. He’s her father, after all. I guess they didn’t get along that great, but still … Tanner was always nice to me.
But, he
made
me do it! Sitting there so smug, so pompous, passing judgment on me. Shrinks aren’t supposed to pass judgment. Then he had to go and bring up that nasty business two years ago. That wasn’t my fault, either, but he made it sound like it was.
I need to think, but my head aches really bad.
He never even screamed. I know he told people that I wasn’t violent. I saw one of the reports he signed. I’ll bet he was sorry he ever wrote that when he saw that lamp coming at him.
Think, think
…
This is the worst. I can’t hide this. No way. His secretary has gone home. She never saw me come in. And I didn’t have an appointment, just dropped in on the off chance that he’d see me, so no one knows I was here except him and me. And neither one of us is going to tell.
But the police will check out his patients and they’ll find out about two years ago and they’ll come looking for me. They’ll put me away again.
I can’t go back to that place. I won’t.
Don’t panic, panic is the worst thing. It makes the headaches unbearable.
Think, think
…
There has to be a way.
They’re not taking me back there. I’ll do anything to stay out of that place.
Anything.
The first thing is, to get out of here. But how far can I go in this storm? The roads might be washed out.
I have to find a place to hide.
Somewhere where no one would think to look for me …
I think I know just the place
…
T
HE RAIN CAME AT
them out of the darkness at a wind-blown slant, silvery sheets of it slapping against the car. The windshield wipers made a steady, annoying, whoosh-whoosh sound as they worked frantically to do their job.
“We should have left Briscoe this afternoon instead of waiting until after supper,” Lynne Grossman told the three passengers in her new silver Toyota Camry. The car had been an unabashed bribe in return for Lynne’s grudging participation in a two-week July math refresher course at Salem University in preparation for freshman year beginning in September. The trip to the university was her first long drive in the new car. “This weather stinks! It’s raining so hard, I can’t see three feet in front of the car, and the defogger isn’t working.”
“We couldn’t leave earlier,” Daisy Rivers said. She was occupying the passenger’s seat. Her left hand repeatedly dove into a bag of cheese snacks, but she chewed and swallowed before she spoke. “I was working, remember? Unlike you, my parents didn’t buy me a brand-new car, and they’re not going to. If I want one, I have to earn the money myself. My boss said if I worked up until the very last minute, he’d hold my job for me while I’m at Salem for two weeks. I need that job when I get back, Lynnie.”
“I know.” Lynne swiped at the misted windshield with one hand. “I didn’t mean it was your fault, Daisy. Quit being so hyper.” She said it calmly, matter-of-factly, as she said almost everything. The fact that she now owned a car wasn’t the only difference between her and Daisy. Lynne was tall and athletic, with smooth, silky, very short, dark hair. She was efficient and even-tempered, except when her unexplained ability to grasp mathematical concepts made her crazy.
Daisy was tall, too, but there the similarities ended. Daisy Rivers was thin and blonde and deceptively fragile-looking, with small bones and a heart-shaped face. But she was anything but fragile, and anything but calm. She was energetic and high-powered. It was hard for her to sit still for more than a few minutes. When she wasn’t sitting in a car, she was in a state of perpetual motion, impatient and always prodding others to move at her pace. Few did.
Being a friend of Lynne’s was easy. Being a friend of Daisy’s was not. But Daisy was loyal to the core and fiercely protective of her friends, and most people felt that made it worthwhile.
Daisy was no more interested in taking the summer math session than she was in hopping a shuttle to the moon, but her acceptance at Salem was conditional … take the course and pass it or we won’t take
you.
No choice. She would much rather have left Briscoe for New York City the day after her high school graduation and make her mark out in the world. No more classes, no more homework, no more papers to write, and no more math. That would have been her first choice.
But Daisy Rivers had been poor all of her life. She was smart enough to know that without some formal training, the dresses, skirts, blouses, and pants and jackets that she designed in a huge sketch pad, would never become reality. Without Salem University, she would
stay
poor, and that wasn’t what she wanted.
College might be a drag, but it was the only way to get to where she wanted to be.
“We’ve already been driving for almost three hours,” Toni Davinci complained from the back seat. “If we don’t get out of this car soon, my body is going to stay permanently frozen in this position,”
“I second the motion,” Molloy Book agreed. She was slouched down beside Toni, her long legs in black leggings stretched out in front of her, her feet in black flats propped up on the armrest between Lynne and Daisy. “I hate this weather! It gives me the creeps. But right now I’d take my chances out there if it’d get me out of this back seat.”
Lynne leaned forward, peering through the misted windshield. “Oh, no!” she cried in a voice that made both Toni and Molloy sit upright, Lynne pointed. “A detour sign! Oh, I don’t believe this. I don’t know my way around this area well enough to take a detour.”
The other three stared through watery windows at the huge orange sign lit by a hanging lantern. DETOUR, ROAD FLOODED.
“There will be other signs, pointing the way,” Molloy said. “They’ll show us how to get back on the highway.”
Lynne groaned. “This is all I need! A stupid detour! As if bad weather and a defective defroster aren’t enough.”
“Calm down,” Daisy said. “We have to be almost there. Let’s just go. Anyway, a detour is better than driving on a flooded road, right? I can’t swim.”
“Neither can I,” Toni echoed from the back seat. “What’s the detour road look like? It’s not one of those awful dirt roads, is it? It’ll be a sea of mud after all this rain.”
“How should I know?” Lynne snapped. “I told you, I can’t see a thing.” But she steered the car off the highway and onto the side road. Without the illumination of highway pole lights, she drove more slowly and, after a few minutes, said in dismay. “It
is
a dirt road! And Toni was right, it’s all mud. I can feel the tires sliding.”
Molloy slid back down in the back seat. This trip was supposed to be a lark. Of the four of them, only she had been enthusiastic about attending the special math session at Salem. But her enthusiasm had more to do with the fact that her boyfriend Ernie Dodd was already on campus. He was attending full summer school in an effort to get a jump-start on his college education.
She couldn’t wait to see Ernie. He’d been gone two weeks already and it seemed like two years. They had talked on the phone every night, while her parents sat in the living room pretending to watch television. They weren’t. They were straining to hear every word of her conversation, their mouths pursed in disapproval. Not that they had anything against Ernie personally. How could anyone not like Ernie?
But the Dodds, all eight of them, lived on the “wrong side of town.” Molloy’s family lived on the “right side.” Ernie’s father worked in a factory. Molloy’s parents owned their own small but successful dry-cleaning shop. A Dodd wasn’t exactly what they had in mind for their daughter. What they had in mind was a handsome, cultured, premed or prelaw student driving an expensive car, whose family lived on the
right
side of town.
Ernie Dodd hoped to be a writer, a profession Molloy’s parents considered financially precarious. His car was an ancient pickup truck with its back window missing, and he honked the horn at the curb when he came to pick her up, instead of coming up to the house and knocking. Not that she blamed him. Her parents treated people who came to the house to sell magazines or vacuum cleaners better than they treated Ernie.
He was absolutely, positively, not what they wanted for her.
But Ernie Dodd, tall, awkward, and always, always badly in need of a decent haircut, was
exactly
what she wanted for herself. Ernie was funny and sweet and thoughtful and never, ever apologized for who he was or where he lived, which Molloy would have hated.
But because she had insisted on attending the same college as Ernie, her parents had refused to help her so she was going to have to work her way through, with the help of several small scholarships. Other people did it. She could do it, too, and would, if it meant being with Ernie.
Her parents would come around one day. Ernie was hard to resist.