Down a Dark Hall
Authors: Lois Duncan
For Dan and Betty Sabo
They had been driving since dawn, but for
the past two hours—since they had turned off the highway onto the winding road that led through the hill country—Kit Gordy
had been sleeping. Perhaps not completely sleeping—a part of her mind had remained awake, conscious of the curves of the road,
of the faint warmth of the September sunlight slanting through the window to warm her hair, and of the two voices in the front
seat: her mother’s light and lilting, Dan’s low-pitched and even.
But Kit rode with her eyes closed and her head settled against the back of the seat. In this way she could keep from joining
the conversation.
I will not talk to them,
she told herself.
I have nothing to say to them
.
When the car drew to a stop, she could not keep herself from opening her eyes. When she did, she found her mother turned sideways,
looking back at her.
“Hi, sleepyhead,” Mrs. Rolland said. “You’ve been missing a lot of pretty countryside—pastures and brooks and rolling hills.
It’s been like something out of a picture book.”
“Has it?” Kit asked with disinterest. She straightened in the seat and glanced out of the window. “Are we stopping for gas?”
“That and directions,” Dan Rolland told her. “According to the map, this must be Blackwood Village, even though I can’t find
a sign anywhere. It shouldn’t be far to the school now. Madame Duret’s letter said it was only about ten miles past the town
limits.”
The service station was small, with only one pump and one attendant, who could be seen through the open door, sitting with
his feet propped on the cash register, reading a magazine. Kit glanced down the narrow street where the one block was lined
with storefronts—a grocery store, a pharmacy, a hardware store, and a gift shop with a display of trendy items in the window.
“It’s the middle of nowhere,” she said. “There isn’t even a movie theater.”
“I think it’s nice,” Mrs. Rolland said. “I grew up in a little town like this one and it was delightful, with no noise, no
pressure, everybody knowing everybody else. I didn’t realize places like this existed anymore.”
“When we get back from Europe,” Dan said, “maybe we can find one. To live in, I mean.” His voice was gentle—
phony
, Kit thought—like something from a Sunday afternoon TV show. But her mother didn’t seem to think so. She smiled and tilted
her head, looking almost girlish, despite the lines at the corners of her eyes and the faint sheen of silver in her dark hair.
“Could we?” she asked. “But Dan, your work . . .”
“They have lawyers in little towns as well as big ones. Or I could just drop law altogether and open a movie theater in Blackwood
Village.”
They laughed together, and Kit turned her head.
“The middle of nowhere,” she grumbled again. “A whole year here! I won’t be able to stand it.”
“I wouldn’t worry.” The gentleness was gone from Dan’s voice. “I doubt that you’ll be getting into the village very often.
Your life will be pretty centered around the school.”
He gave the horn a beep and the attendant looked up, startled, took a moment to adjust to the summons, and slowly laid his
magazine on the counter. He stretched, yawned, and finally got to his feet to come begrudgingly out to the car.
“Want some gas, Mister? You can pump it yourself and pay inside.”
“I’ll do that,” Dan said, “but I also need directions. Can you tell us how to find the Blackwood School for Girls?”
“Around here?” The man looked bewildered.
“It’s a boarding school run by a Madame Duret. The post office address is Blackwood Village, but the school itself is supposed
to be out of town a ways. It used to be a private home owned by a man named Brewer.”
“Oh, the Brewer place!” The man nodded in recognition. “Well, sure, I know where that is. I did hear that some foreign lady
had bought the place. She’s had some of the town people up there during the summer getting it into shape, fixing the roof
and the grounds and all. I think she’s hired Bob Culler’s girl Natalie to do kitchen work.”
“Can you tell us how to get there?” Dan asked patiently.
“That’s easy enough. Just follow this road through town and out the other side. It’ll take you up into the hills, and you’ll
see a private road cutting in from the left.”
He turned and went back inside, and Kit sighed, leaning her head back against the seat.
“Honey, please.” Her mother turned to look at her with worried eyes. “Just give the school a chance. The pictures were so
lovely with that wonderful old house and the pond and the woods all around it, and Madame Duret was so charming when we met
her last spring. You seemed happy enough about going when we first suggested it.”
“That’s when I thought Tracy was going,” Kit said. “I still don’t see why I can’t go to Europe with you and Dan. I won’t be
any trouble. I’m sixteen. I can take care of myself.”
“Kit, that’s enough.” There was an edge to Dan’s voice. “We’ve been over it and over it. I know your position in the family
has been different from that of most girls; with just the two of you, your mother has treated you as her equal rather than
a child. You’re strong-willed and independent and very used to running things. But you are
not
going with us on our honeymoon.”
“But I don’t see—” Kit began. Dan interrupted her.
“No more, now. You’re upsetting your mother.”
He got out of the car, filled the tank, and went inside to pay. Kit and her mom sat in silence until he returned, got into
the car, and started the engine. They pulled out onto the street and drove past the block of shop fronts and past another
two blocks of small white houses, and then across a bridge over a narrow river where water swirled in frothy tumult between
gray stones. Then the town was behind them and they began to climb.
Trees grew thicker along the sides of the road as the fields gave way to woodland. Dense and dark and still smelling of summer,
they laced their branches across the road.
Like guards,
Kit thought,
protecting something that lies beyond
.
Growing up in the city, she had never had a chance to really know trees, only the ones in the park and the few small, thin
ones in front of the public library. If you watched those carefully you could mark the seasons by their leaves: translucent
green ones in the springtime that then drooped in the summer and crinkled and fell with the autumn frost.
The trees they passed now were different, wild and strange, living a separate life of their own. Country trees. Mountain trees.
* * *
“There’s nothing lovelier than upstate New York in the autumn,” Kit’s mother had said when the brochure describing Blackwood
arrived in the mail. “The school sounds perfect. A small, select number of students, individual instruction in music and art,
and all sorts of advanced studies that you wouldn’t get in a public high school. When you graduate from Blackwood, Kit, you
should be able to get into any college in the country.”
“This Madame Duret has an impressive background,” Dan had added, studying the written material. “She was the owner and headmistress
of a girls’ school in London and before that she had one in Paris. And she has a fantastic knowledge of art. I recall reading
an article about her once in
Newsweek
. One of the paintings she picked up somewhere at an auction turned out to be an original Vermeer.”
“That would interest Tracy,” Kit had said. Her best friend, Tracy Rosenblum, considered herself an artist.
“I wonder,” her mother had said thoughtfully, “if the Rosenblums might want to consider sending Tracy to Blackwood. They can
certainly afford it, and the two of you have always been inseparable.”
“Do you think they might?” Kit’s enthusiasm suddenly went up. She and Tracy had been close friends since elementary school.
Going away to boarding school wouldn’t be so bad if Tracy were going too.
So for six weeks she had drifted along, accepting whatever came—her mother’s marriage to Dan, their plan for a European honeymoon,
the reams of tests that were necessary for entrance to Blackwood—confident that soon she would escape it all with her best
friend.
Then the notice had arrived that Tracy had not been accepted. It was as though the bottom had dropped out of Kit’s world.
“I’m not going!” she had stormed. “It won’t be any fun without Tracy.” But for the first time in her life, she found herself
faced with a stubbornness that matched her own.
“Of course you’re going,” Dan had told her firmly. “You’ll make new friends. Knowing you, I won’t be surprised if you’re elected
president of the student body the first week you get there.” He had smiled when he said it but the tone of his voice had left
no room for argument.
Kit had clung to one last hope that her mother might intercede for her, but that had faded today with each passing mile. Now
they were on the final lap of the journey, with Blackwood only a matter of minutes away. There could be no turning back at
this point; it was time to face the inevitable.
They almost missed the road because it was not paved. Dan hit the brakes, brought the car to a stop, and backed it up again.
“Could that be it?” he asked, frowning. “There isn’t any name on it. You’d think there would be a sign of some sort directing
us in.”
“Let’s give it a try,” Kit’s mother suggested. “We’ve come a good ten miles, and there haven’t been any other roads.”
“Nothing to lose, I guess.” Dan pulled into the lane, and Kit felt the tires sink a little in the rich, damp soil.
They inched their way along for several yards, and then the road curved and suddenly the trees closed in around them. It was
as if the highway behind them never existed, for they were in a world of cool darkness where the only sound was the rustle
of leaves and the only odor the wild, sweet smell of earth and woods.
“This can’t be right,” Dan said.
They continued inching forward as the road twisted and rose and turned again, and suddenly they were passing through an open
gate in a high spiked fence. Gravel crunched beneath the wheels.
“This is it,” Kit exclaimed, surprised into speech. “There’s the sign—this is Blackwood!”
For a moment she forgot that she did not want to be there and simply sat, staring wide-eyed at the vista that had opened before
them. There on a rise above them stood a house such as she had never envisioned in her strangest dreams.
It was huge, three stories tall with a black slate roof so steep that it seemed to fall rather than slope to its outer edge.
The walls were of gray stone, no two of the same size and shape, yet arranged somehow, one upon another, so as to fit together
like a child’s jigsaw puzzle. The huge front door was flanked by stone lions and the steps leading down to the driveway were
fashioned of the same stone. Centered on the second-floor level there was a deep-set window of stained glass. The other windows
were more ordinary in construction, but the late afternoon sunlight struck them now in such a way that it seemed as though
the entire interior of the mansion was ablaze with orange flames.
“Good lord!” Dan exclaimed, letting his breath out in a low whistle. “You won’t be missing a thing, Kit, by not going with
us to Europe. You’re going to be living in a castle.”
“It didn’t look like this in the brochure,” Kit said. “Did it?”
She tried to picture the photograph of the school that had been part of the folder, but she could not see it in her mind.
It seemed to her that it had been of an ordinary enough looking building, large, of course, as a school would have to be,
but nothing special.
“The picture didn’t do it justice,” her mother said now. “And to think, this was once a private residence! It’s hard to imagine
what sort of people must have lived here, way up in the hills so far from the nearest little town.”
Dan shifted into first gear and they continued up the driveway.
But for some reason it seemed to Kit that they were not covering any distance. The house stood above them still, no closer
than it had been when they had turned in at the gate. It was an illusion, she knew, something to do with the curve of the
driveway and the angle at which they were approaching, but the car itself did not seem to be moving. It was as if the house
were growing larger, reaching out its great gray arms to gather them in. She could not move her eyes from the glowing windows,
dancing before her like a hundred miniature suns. Kit shivered with the sensation of an icy wind blowing across her heart.
“Mom,” she said softly, and then, more loudly, “Mom?”
“What is it, honey?” Her mother turned in the seat to look back at her.
“I don’t want to stay here,” Kit said.
“Now, look,” Dan said impatiently, “there’s no use rehashing this. We’re not taking you abroad with us, and that’s final.
You’d better accept it, Kit. Your mother and—”
“That’s not it,” Kit said frantically. “I don’t care where I stay, Dan. I’ll go back to the city and live with the Rosenblums
while you and Mom are gone. Or I’ll go to another boarding school. There must be plenty of schools that would take me.”