Down a Dark Hall (8 page)

“Can’t you feel it?” she had cried to her mother. “There’s something about the place—”

“Yes,” she said to Sandy now, shivering a little despite the wool sweater. “I did say that, and I do know what you mean. But
how can it be the place itself? A place doesn’t have a personality.”

“What was the first word that came to your mind when you saw it?”

“I—I don’t remember,” Kit stammered.

“You do. You just don’t want to remember. There was a particular word, and it jumped right into your mind. It was ‘evil.’ ”

“You’re right.” Kit turned to her incredulously. “How could you know that? I never told you. I never told anybody.”

“I know it because the word was
there
. I felt it too. It was as much a part of the first view of this place as the peaked roof. Professor Farley picked me up at
the bus stop in the village, and we drove up here through the beautiful morning with the sunlight streaming down through the
trees and the sky so blue and clear. We came through the gate and started up the driveway, and it was as though a black shadow
fell in front of us. An invisible force. The closer we got to the house, the darker it got—the kind of darkness you can feel
and not see—and when I got out of the car and walked through that front door, I almost turned and ran back out again.”

“But we don’t feel it now,” Kit said. “Not all the time. At night along the hall we do, with it all so black, and in our dreams,
but there are lots of times when we laugh and study and go to class and it’s all so nice and normal—”

“Because we’re part of it now,” Sandy said. “Don’t you see, Kit? We’re
part
of the shadow. We’ve been living in it for weeks and we’re adjusting to it. That’s why I wanted to come outside tonight,
to stand back from Blackwood and be able to look at it and feel the difference.”

“It does feel different from out here,” Kit admitted. Standing there in the moonlight, she could look at Blackwood, at the
great building with the pointed roof, towering against the paler darkness of the sky, as though it were a picture in a child’s
storybook. Lynda’s second-floor room was dark. A light shone in Ruth’s; evidently she had already begun her evening studying.
Sandy’s corner room was on the far side of the hall, facing off the other side of the house. And her own—

“There’s a light on,” she said.

“What?”

“A light in my room. There—that window there—that
is
my room, isn’t it?”

“Of course,” Sandy said. “Perhaps you left it on when you came down to dinner.”

“I didn’t,” Kit said. “I remember turning the light off. Then I locked the door.” She stiffened, her eyes glued to the shining
window, as a dark form moved across it.

“Somebody’s there!” she exclaimed. “Somebody’s in my room!”

“That’s impossible if you locked your door.” Sandy too was staring at the window. “Maybe it’s the curtain blowing.”

“It’s not! It’s a person!” Kit whirled and started up the path at a run. “Come on, we’ll catch him! There’s no place he can
go except back along the hall. If we get to the stairs in time we can cut him off!”

But the stairs were empty, and so was the long, black hallway. The door was still locked. When she turned the key and opened
it, Kit found the room dark. She turned on the light, and before she looked, she knew what she would find. The pencil portrait
was no longer on her desk. It was gone.

Her dream that night was different. It was a strange dream, and oddly lovely. In it she was in the music room, sitting at
the piano, and her fingers were at home on the keys. There was no sheet music in front of her, but she was playing in a way
that she never had played before. It was a beautiful melody, as cool and haunting as the moonlight in the garden, as smooth
as the path of silver across the pond.

It is so beautiful,
she told herself in the dream,
that I must try to remember it so that I can play it again
. But the music had no name, and she knew that she had never heard it before.

When she woke in the morning she felt as exhausted as though she had never slept at all, and her fingers ached.

The incoming mail was on a table in
the
entrance hall, and Kit, coming back from a class with Professor Farley, picked up the items addressed to her and carried them up to
her room to read.

There were two postcards from her mother, one from Cherbourg and one from Paris, both sent by airmail but with a week between
mailing dates.

“. . .  so exciting,” the first one said, “. . . marvelous trip over . . . so many interesting people on board . . . we caught
up on our sleep and lay out on deck chairs.” The second was filled with references to the Eiffel Tower and Montmartre and
the Folies Bergere.

“Where are your letters, honey?” said a hurried postscript. “We got your note in Cherbourg but haven’t had a word since. You
have our itinerary. Write care of American Express, but allow enough time.”

Besides the postcards, there was a letter from Tracy. The neat, round handwriting, almost as familiar as Tracy herself, gave
Kit a momentary pang of homesickness.

“That must be some great place,” the letter ran, “if you can’t even get around to writing. What’s with that promise you made
to keep me up to date on everything? Things here are as usual. I got Mrs. Logan for English—hooray!—and Mr. Garfield for Latin—boo!
Advanced art is awesome, we can do whatever we want. There’s a cute guy in my geometry class named Kevin Webster. How are
you dealing up at Blackwood without a single guy under the age of eighty?”

There’s Jules,
Kit thought.
I wrote her about Jules in my very first letter. Did it get lost in the mail? But I’ve written a couple of times since and
mentioned him both times
.

She flipped over the page and was skimming the next few paragraphs when there was a light rap at the door. “Come on in,” Kit
called, assuming it was Sandy. To her surprise her visitor turned out to be Ruth Crowder.

“I hope I’m not disturbing you.” The dark-haired girl stood hesitantly in the doorway. “If you’re in the middle of studying—”

“I’m not,” Kit said. “I’m only reading some letters.”

“Then I want to show you something.” Ruth stepped inside and closed the door carefully behind her. “It’s this.”

She held out a sheet of paper. At a glance Kit could see that it was a crude sketch of a face, a wavering, childish drawing
of the type that one might expect to see in a display of elementary school art.

“What is it?” she asked. “Did it come in the mail? Your little brother or sister—”

“No,” Ruth said. “It’s a portrait of me. Lynda did it. It’s the picture she drew for that parlor game she was talking about.”

“Lynda drew that?” Kit exclaimed, reaching for the paper and laying it flat on the bed in front of her. Ruth came over to
stand beside her and together they studied the drawing. A round, unformed face. A triangle nose. A mouth that resembled a
Halloween pumpkin. A mop of black hair.

“She got the hair right,” Ruth said. “It’s black. Frankly, I don’t see any other resemblance. I know I’m no beauty queen,
but even I have two eyes that look in the same direction. And she forgot to put on the ears.”

“I don’t understand,” Kit said. “We know that Lynda can draw. That portrait she did of me was awesome.”

“It was a freak occurrence,” Ruth said flatly. “Lynda can’t draw, Lynda doesn’t have any talent in anything. She’s pretty
and sweet, but the day they distributed brains, Lynda was out to lunch.”

Somehow, from Ruth, the statement did not sound brutal, simply factual.

“Sit down,” Kit said slowly. “I think you and I need to talk.”

Ruth nodded. She seated herself on the edge of the bed. In her lap, her square, strong hands gripped each other tightly.

“Something’s going on here,” she said in a low voice. “I know it, but I don’t know what it is. Do you feel it too?”

“Yes,” Kit said, “and so does Sandy.”

“Lynda doesn’t. Lynda doesn’t notice things. She’s like a little kid in so many ways.”

“Maybe you’d better tell me about her,” Kit said. “And about yourself. The two of you seem to be good friends, but you’re
so different. There’s nothing wrong with
your
I.Q.”

“It’s a hundred and fifty,” Ruth said with pride. “I was ahead of myself from the beginning. I skipped two grades in elementary
school, and by the time I reached middle school I was already so far ahead on my own that the things in the textbooks were
boring to me. And the kids didn’t like me. Who wants a fat little nine-year-old in a class of twelve-year-olds?

“My parents are both PhDs. They think education is very important, so they decided to send me to a special, ungraded school
in Los Angeles. That’s where I first met Lynda.”

“What was she doing there,” Kit asked, “if the school was for brilliant students?”

“Well, it wasn’t exactly. At least, that’s what I discovered after I got there. It was just ‘elite.’ I don’t know if you realize
it or not, but Lynda’s mother is Margaret Storm.”

“Margaret Storm, the actress?” Kit said in surprise. “I’ve seen her on the classic movie channels.”

“She was pretty popular in her day,” Ruth said. “Of course, a glamorous actress doesn’t stay on top forever. Lynda says she’s
still making movies, but the parts aren’t that good anymore, and she met some Italian actor in one of them and there was some
sort of scandal—well, anyway, she’s living in Italy now. That’s why Lynda was away at school. She was really lost there. She’d
try and try, but she just couldn’t keep up academically. And I couldn’t keep up socially. We sort of found each other, and
after that it wasn’t so bad for either of us.”

“Why did you come to Blackwood?” Kit asked her.

“That was my parents’ doing. They didn’t think the school in L.A. was challenging enough, and they were right. When they read
the brochure about Blackwood and saw the part about the private instruction, the way each student moves along at her own level,
they got pretty excited. We talked about it during spring break, and Mom wrote to Madame Duret and arranged for me to take
the entrance tests, and then Lynda heard about it and persuaded her mother to let her take them too. She didn’t want to be
left behind.”

“And she got in?” Kit said. “That’s surprising, isn’t it?”

“I couldn’t believe it,” Ruth said. “I thought maybe they’d mixed up the scores. But Lynda likes it here. Everybody’s nice to her. And now suddenly she thinks she’s an artist, and she’s thrilled about that. Madame Duret has given her an easel
and oil paints and canvases. You should see Lynda’s room! It looks like a professional studio.”

“But if she doesn’t have any talent for art,” Kit said, “how could she have drawn the picture of me? You call it a ‘freak
occurrence,’ but that’s not an answer. How could someone produce something that expert, when the best she ever did before
is
this
?” She gestured toward the dreadful sketch.

“That’s what’s so crazy,” Ruth said. “Maybe that picture of you isn’t as good as we first thought it was. Get it out so we
can look at it again.”

“I can’t,” Kit said. “I don’t have it anymore.”

“You don’t have it?”

“Somebody took it,” Kit said. “The door was locked, but somebody got in anyway and took the picture off my desk.”

“Do you know who?” Ruth asked her.

“I have no idea. I can’t even think who would want the picture. We all have the keys to our own rooms, but I’m sure that Madame
must have duplicates. Who could use them depends on where she keeps them.”

“Or she could have taken it herself,” Ruth suggested.

“Why would she do a thing like that? Why would a picture of me mean that much to her? Besides, as far as I know, she wasn’t
even aware of the sketch. She wasn’t in the parlor when Lynda brought it in to show to us. Nobody was there then except us
girls.”

“Professor Farley came in,” Ruth reminded her. “He saw it.”

“That’s right, he did. But why would
he
want it? The more we talk about it, the more ridiculous the whole thing seems. Lynda, who can’t draw, draws a wonderful picture.
There’s no reason for anyone to want it except me, yet somebody goes into a locked room to steal it. Add that to Sandy’s nightmare
about the woman by her bed—”

“A nightmare?”

“That’s what Jules thinks it was. Sandy isn’t so certain. She’s had experiences like that before. There was one time in particular,
right after her parents were killed. They were in a plane crash, and before any report was received, Sandy knew about it.
She says it just came to her from out of the blue, the absolute certainty that the plane was down and her parents were dead.”

“So she has it too.” Ruth spoke softly, and there was no surprise in her voice.

“Has what?” Kit asked blankly.

“ESP.” Ruth paused, and then, seeing the bewilderment on Kit’s face, elaborated. “Extrasensory perception. It’s a sort of
sixth sense that some people are born with. It’s a special kind of sensitivity to things that are normally not seen or heard.”

“And you think Sandy has that?” Kit exclaimed. “But you said, ‘She has it
too
.’ Do you mean that
you
—”

“I’ve had it for as long as I can remember,” Ruth said. “For a while I didn’t realize what it was. I thought maybe it just
came with being bright, my being able to sense things that other people couldn’t. It was part of how I got ahead so fast in
school. I could look at a book and sometimes I wouldn’t even have to open it, I just knew without reading it what was inside.
When my teachers asked questions, I’d know the answers even if I hadn’t studied the material. I could feel the answers in
their minds. Then I’d tell them just what it was they wanted to hear.”

“And Lynda?” Kit asked shakily. “Does Lynda have this ability too?”

“Not in the same way,” Ruth said. “With Lynda it’s a different thing. Lynda remembers.”

“Remembers?” Kit repeated the word stupidly. “Remembers
what
?”

“This is going to sound crazy,” Ruth said. “It did to me the first time she told me. But now—after getting to know her so
well—I almost believe it’s true. At least, I believe that Lynda thinks it is.”

“Well?”

Ruth’s eyes dropped to her hands, still gripped tightly in her lap.

“Lynda,” she said, “remembers another lifetime in which she was born in England and lived under Queen Victoria.”

“Oh my god!” Kit said in a cracked voice. There was a long moment of silence while she digested this information. Then she
shook her head. “You’re right, it’s crazy. But it’s no crazier than the night I woke to see my father standing by my bed.
In the morning I found that he had been killed in an accident the night before.”

“So,” Ruth said softly, “it’s you too.” She drew a deep breath. “I guess that now, at least, we realize what it is the four
of us girls have in common, and why, out of all the applications, we were selected to be the first students at Blackwood.”

At first the thought occurred to her that she might be dreaming again. Of course, she knew that she wasn’t. It was midafternoon,
and she was on her way to her literature class with Madame Duret. And yet, the music . . .

It was coming from behind the closed door of the music room. Strange and beautiful and achingly familiar, the melody swept
over her, drawing from her a response she had never experienced from any music before. She placed her hand on the knob and
opened the door. Jules was seated with his back toward her, and the music was coming from the stereo speakers on the recording
equipment.

“What are you playing?” Kit asked him. When he did not respond, she realized that he was concentrating too hard on the music
to have heard her. She raised her voice. “Jules, what is that music?” With a quick, startled gesture, Jules flicked a switch
and the sound abruptly ceased. His expression when he turned was one of unreasonable anger.

“What do you mean, interruptin—” he began, and then, at the sight of Kit’s surprised face, he seemed to catch himself. His
voice softened. “Oh—it’s you.”

“You didn’t have to turn it off,” Kit said. “I heard the music through the door. It’s beautiful. I had to know what it is.”

“I don’t think it has a name,” Jules told her.

“But it must. Everything that’s published has a name.”

“Well, sure. What I meant was, I don’t know what it is.”

“Doesn’t it say on the CD?”

“It’s not a commercial recording,” Jules said. “It’s just a collection of odds and ends I’ve taken from one source or another
because I liked them.”

“I like them too,” Kit said. “Especially that last piece. Could you play it again?”

“You heard most of it.” Jules made no gesture to switch the sound back on again. Kit regarded him with bewilderment. Never
had she seen Jules Duret with anything but complete control of himself. Now he looked off balance, as though he didn’t know
how to handle the situation.

His eyes shifted from hers in a way that made him look almost guilty.
Guilty about what?
Kit could not imagine. She knew that she should get to class. She was already late, and Madame could not stand tardiness.
Still, she stood there, anchored in the doorway, watching the play of expressions across Jules’ handsome face.