Deadly Visions (Nightmare Hall) (7 page)

She couldn’t help seeing what was there, could she?

What was she supposed to do now?
Pretend
she didn’t see what she saw?

She was grateful now that she hadn’t told anyone what she’d seen in the still life. True, they’d all seen her staring, and must have wondered. But she hadn’t actually said anything.

Who had put the brass monkey on her pillow? What was going on?

Sleep was a long time coming, and when it did, it was a restless, fitful sleep.

T
HE HOUSE THAT HAD
been ablaze with lights only a few hours earlier is dark now, a hulking, ominous shape looming up from behind the oaks towering over it. A deep, unnatural silence has fallen over the hill, and not a leaf stirs on the trees or the shrubbery flanking the front porch.

Inside, the same, dark silence permeates the three-story house. But this silence is anxious, tentative, as if the house itself is holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Something bad …

The first sound to break the silence is the creak of a door opening somewhere on the first floor. Then footsteps going up the staircase, soft, whispering footsteps, like that of feet wearing socks or moccasins.

The footsteps belong to a tall figure in flowing black. It tiptoes along the darkened hall as if it knows its way.

A hand reaches out, turns a knob, opens a door. The figure disappears inside the room.

The room faces the skinny, rusted fire escape running along the outside of the house from the ground to the attic on the third floor.

It is a warm and balmy night, so the window is wide open, although no breeze stirs the white lace curtains.

The figure in black moves toward the bed, where deep, even breathing sounds.

The hand reaches out again, this time to shake a sleeping shoulder and whisper harshly, “Get up! There’s a fire! Hurry!”

The dreaded word, “Fire” awakens the unsuspecting resident of Nightingale Hall. “What?” he whispers, the way people do in the dark, “what’s wrong?”

“No time,” the voice whispers back, “no time to talk. There’s a fire! You’ll have to climb out the window to the fire escape. Hurry, hurry!”

A sleepy-eyed, dazed Milo Keith, tall and skinny and bearded, jumps from the bed, instinctively grabs a pair of jeans lying crumpled on the floor and yanks them on. He reaches desperately for a notebook of his latest poetry
l
ying on the bed, but the hand stops him. “No time. Go! Hurry!”

Milo stumbles to the open window. With one last, reluctant look at his possessions, which he believes are about to be lost forever in a roaring blaze, he climbs over the sill onto the ancient fire escape. He sees no sign of flames, smells no smoke, but thinks maybe the fire has begun on the opposite side of the house.

Before beginning to descend the fire escape, he turns slightly to say, “There’s no one else out here. Is everyone in the house awake? Are they safe? I can help
…
”

Two hands reach out of the open window and push, hard.

Caught off guard, an already dazed Milo loses his balance, and, too startled to cry out, topples backward. His skinny legs flailing wildly, he tumbles end over end down the unyielding metal stairs. He does cry out once, only once, as the back of his skull takes a particularly sharp and painful blow. Still he continues to fall, propelled by his own momentum, until finally he comes to a rest halfway down the metal stairs.

No lights go on inside the house. After an exhausting party, the residents of Nightmare Hall are too lost in sleep to hear that single cry.

Milo lies stunned, his legs dangling over one of the metal rungs. He fights to cling to consciousness. Blood trickles from his head.

Above him, the figure cloaked in black makes a muted sound of satisfaction, whispers something, then turns and leaves the room, not rushing, not hurrying, walking calmly.

Outside, the figure turns only once to look up at the fire escape at the side of the old, gloomy house. The hooded head nods at the sight of two legs dangling over the edge of a stair halfway down. The legs hang limply, lifelessly now, evidence that the victim has lost his valiant struggle to remain conscious.

Then, whistling softly, the black figure, just one more dark shadow among the gnarled old oaks, moves on down the driveway and up the street toward campus.

R
ACHEL JOLTED AWAKE AS
if she’d been prodded with a hot wire. Her eyes flew open to bright daylight, telling her she must have had the nightmare during the last few moments of sleep.

She remembered every second of it. Every awful second.

Milo … Milo Keith, the skinny poet she’d met the night before at Nightmare Hall, had been in her nightmare. Rachel sat up in bed, scooting backward until she was huddled in a corner. Was Milo really lying on that fire escape, his head bloody, his legs still dangling over one rusted rung?

Or had someone discovered him by now?

Or … Rachel clenched and unclenched her fists … or had it never happened? Maybe this time it
was
just a nightmare. Maybe Milo was sound asleep in his own bed, unscathed.

She had to know for sure.

Leaning forward, she grabbed the campus telephone book from her bedside table and, a moment later, dialed Nightingale Hall’s number. Bibi heard the pushbuttons clicking and groaned a complaint, but didn’t fully awaken.

A woman’s voice answered. “Mrs. Coates here,” she said briskly. “Who’s calling, please?”

Rachel didn’t give her name. “Could I please speak to Milo Keith?”

“Oh, my dear,” the woman said in a quieter voice, “that would be impossible. Milo has had a dreadful accident. He’s been taken to the hospital in Twin Falls. I was just on my way there. If you’ll give me your name, I’ll be happy to tell him you called.” She paused, and then added, “If he’s conscious when I get there. He wasn’t when the ambulance took him away. Took a terrible blow to the head …”

Rachel hung up. She sank back against the pillow, fighting nausea. It
had
happened. While Mrs. Coates hadn’t actually said that Milo’s “accident” had taken place on the fire escape, Rachel knew that it had. He had tumbled down those rusty metal stairs just like the figure in the still life.

No, no, no! Again, what she’d seen in a painting had come to life in a dream. And again, the terrible vision had become reality.

How was that possible?

Rachel’s skin felt fiery, as if someone were holding a torch to it.

Would the still life arrive at her door, wrapped in white plastic, as the seascape had?

She buried her face in her pillow.

“What’s the matter?” Bibi asked when she awoke a few minutes later and saw Rachel crumpled in a ball on her bed. “Are you sick? Too much partying?”

Rachel rolled over and sat up again.

“Rachel, what is
wrong
with you? You look like one of those masks Aidan’s always making out of plaster. The ones at the exhibit. All white and pasty, like unbaked bread dough.”

“Milo Keith fell down the fire escape at Nightmare Hall last night,” Rachel said dully. “He’s in the hospital.”

Bibi’s mouth made a round O of horror. “The fire escape? They had a fire at Nightmare Hall after the party?”

Rachel shook her head. “No. No fire. He just … he just fell. During the night.” She couldn’t tell Bibi that Milo hadn’t fallen, that he’d been pushed, because then she’d have to mention the dream. Which Bibi would react to with scorn.

“How do you know?”

“I just called there. The housemother told me.”

Bibi tilted her head, curiosity on her face. “If there wasn’t a fire, what was Milo doing out on the fire escape in the middle of the night? And why were you calling Nightmare Hall at nine o’clock on a Sunday morning in the first place? Did you leave something there last night?”

Rachel didn’t even hesitate. Bibi had just given her the perfect excuse for the phone call. “An earring. One of the garnet ones. It must have fallen off when I was dancing. And I don’t know what Milo was doing out there during the night,” she lied. “But I think he’s seriously hurt. A head injury, Mrs. Coates said.” She needed desperately to confide in someone about last night’s horrible dream. But if she
did
decide to tell someone, it wouldn’t be Bibi.

“Well,” Bibi said, sliding out of bed, “I don’t know Milo very well, but he seemed like an okay guy. I just can’t figure why he would be out on that old fire escape in the middle of the night.” Shaking her head at Milo’s apparent foolishness, Bibi went off to take her shower.

I have to see the still life again, Rachel thought. Before the artist takes it away, as he did the seascape. Before he changes it. She had to see the staircase image again before the painting was doctored up and delivered to her as a “gift.”

She jumped from the bed and darted to the closet. Slipping into a pair of jeans and a bright green T-shirt, she pushed her feet into sandals, ran a brush through her hair, grabbed her purse, and hurried from the room.

She raced across the relatively deserted campus, not even bothering to say hello to the few people she saw.

When she reached the art building, out of breath, and praying the still life would not be gone from the wall behind the pedestal, Rachel yanked the heavy wooden door open.

It was dim and cool inside, but not empty. Rudy Samms, armed with a duster and a yellow can of furniture polish, was working at a huge desk in the middle of the lobby.

“What are you doing here?” he called as she made a dash for the corner where the still life had been hanging.

She ignored him, focusing her eyes on the wall just ahead of her. When she was close enough, she breathed a sigh of relief. The painting was still there, in the same spot. It looked as if it hadn’t been touched.

She’d arrived in time.

No, not quite. Because when she looked more closely at the painting, she realized with a sudden surge of fury that it had indeed been touched. Touched
up,
she corrected mentally. The stairs and the flailing legs were gone. It was as if they’d never been there. The entire vase was now thickly layered with nothing but dove-gray swirls and brushstrokes.

She whirled and hurried over to Rudy. She knew he’d been watching her, but now he was pretending to concentrate industriously on his dusting. “Who’s been in here this morning?” Rachel demanded.

“No one. Just me.” He looked up lazily. “Why?”

“Are you sure? What time did you get here?”

“Seven. I’m always in early. No one gets here before me. Of course,” he aimed a sly glance at her, “someone could have come into the lobby while I was upstairs, cleaning up the studios.” He shook his head. “Have to be awfully careful up there, not to damage any of the precious ‘works of art,’” he added sarcastically.

“You think someone came in while you were upstairs?” Rachel pressed sharply.

“I didn’t say that. I said, someone
might
have. I can’t be in two places at the same time, now can I? So,” he shrugged as if to dismiss the matter, “who knows? Why? Something wrong?”

She wasn’t going to learn anything from him.

Rachel turned away. She had planned to take the painting with her when she left, take it to the police and show them the stairs and the falling legs hidden within the work. But there was no point now. All they would see was a vase filled with blue and lavender and mauve flowers.

She turned back to Rudy. “How do you get upstairs?”

He shot her a contemptuous look. “How do you think, Rachel? You either walk up the stairs or take the elevator, the same way you would in any other building on campus.”

“I meant,” she said coldly, “where is the staircase?”

He waved a hand toward the rear of the lobby.

“Are the rooms up there open? Unlocked, I mean?”

He nodded.

“I promised Aidan I’d come and take a look at his masks,” she said. “That’s why I’m here.”

“Then why were you looking at that still life?”

And why are you so suspicious? she almost said. But she knew she needed him, so she said instead, “Aidan has a couple of masks on that wall, too, Rudy. Listen, I need a favor.”

“What kind of favor? I’m busy.”

Rachel said pleasantly, “If anyone comes in and goes anywhere near that still life in the corner, would you come up and get me? I’ll be in one of the art studios.”

“I have work to do,” he objected. “I can’t be watching the door.”

“Bibi would really be happy if you’d do her roommate this one favor,” Rachel said, hating herself for using Bibi. But desperate times called for desperate measures. Rudy was all she had, and if she had to blackmail him into helping her out, so be it. “Rudy, there’s no way you won’t notice one lone person walking into the lobby. All I want you to do is come and get me. Use the elevator. It’ll only take a second.”

“Oh, all right. But I’m going to be done in here in a few minutes.”

“I’ll hurry.”

And she did. She went from one studio to another, as vague about what she was looking for as she had been at the waterfall. But she couldn’t bear to leave the art building without at least looking around. He had been here sometime during the night, slathering fresh oils on the still life. Maybe he’d left some sign, some clue …

The studios all smelled of paint and paint thinner. Rachel knew where she’d found the studio where Aidan worked because half a dozen of his masks lay on cloths on a table. There was a faint, mildewy smell of plaster.

Rachel was drawn to the masks. They were lying on a long, narrow table directly beneath a wall of short, wide windows. She recognized only one of the faces. Samantha’s. There was no mistaking the perfect oval, the high cheekbones, the deep-set eyes, the confident set of the mouth.

Samantha had been braver than Rachel.

She wanted to pick up the mask and check the back for Aidan’s initials, part of her hoping that someone else had taken the time and energy to create a mask of Samantha’s face, not Aidan. But she was terrified that she’d drop it and it would smash into a thousand tiny pieces scattered all across the floor. Besides, she knew it was his.