Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall) (7 page)

“At the library,” Debrah answered. “Researching a paper on McCoy for her contemporary literature class. I wouldn’t think there was anything that Lilith didn’t know about McCoy, but I guess there is. Never mind Lilith,” she added impatiently, “tell us about working for the Great One. What’s she like?”

Reed almost laughed aloud. A very good question. What
was
Victoria McCoy like? A raging volcano, or a nice, pleasant, absent-minded artist? Who knew? Not me, she thought, and answered, “She’s … nice. I really didn’t see much of her. She has her own office at the back of the house, and she disappeared into it right after I got there.”

During the trek back to campus, Debrah and Jude continued to ask questions Reed couldn’t answer. Only Link was silent.

“Rain’s coming to the party at Nightmare Hall,” she announced as they arrived at the dorm.

“What?” Link’s voice echoed through the twilight peace of campus. “With
you? I
was going to ask you to that party.”

“Well, you didn’t,” Reed pointed out lightly. “Anyway, it’s not really a date.” Well, what
is
it then? she asked herself. Rain asked you to a movie, which would certainly be considered a date. And then you suggested the party instead, so wouldn’t that still be a date? “Next time,” she added, smiling at Link, “don’t wait so long. People aren’t just going to sit around while you make up your mind, you know.”

“I’d already
made
up my mind,” he said sullenly. “You’ve been busy. Besides, how was I supposed to know somebody else was going to ask you? Everyone
knows
you’re …”

He stopped just in time. Reed knew he’d been about to say “taken.” Good thing he hadn’t! She wasn’t anybody’s property.

“I said, it’s not a date,” she said calmly. “I’ll see you at the party, right?”

“I’ll see you before then. Debrah and Jude and Lilith have classes tomorrow when you leave for work, but I don’t. I’m walking you over there. And I’ll
keep
walking you over there until we find out where Carl Nordstrum is.” Link stomped away without a good-bye.

“I don’t get it,” Debrah said sourly as they rode up to the sixth floor in the elevator. “You’re okay-looking, I guess, but everyone tells me I look like Cher, and
you’re
the one who has two guys interested in her, and one of them is the son of a famous author. I just don’t get it.”

“It’s your mouthwash,” Reed joked, and then had to force back a laugh as Debrah quickly put a hand to her mouth to breathe into her palm. “Debrah, I was just joking. Your breath is fine.”

Who was Debrah kidding, anyway? She’d never go out with Link
or
Rain. Debrah only dated business administration majors, because she figured they’d work on Wall Street and make big bucks, so if she married one, she could afford to stay home and write full-time. Debrah knew exactly what she wanted. Link and Rain just didn’t fit the profile. Well … maybe Rain did. His mother was rich, so he’d probably be rich, too, one day. Reed said. “Actually, it’s not your breath. It’s your cologne.”

They were both laughing when they got off the elevator.

That evening, several people in the dorm who knew that Reed had gone to work for McCoy asked her what the author was like. Each time, the vision of McCoy’s face twisted with rage sprang into Reed’s mind. Each time, she evaded the question with a vague answer.

At least, she didn’t have to tell them she’d been fired on the first day. That would have been so humiliating. She wouldn’t have had the nerve to admit that she’d been fired for snooping. She’d have had to make up some flimsy excuse.

Reed and Tisha held a study session in their room that night. Debrah and Lilith were there, and several of Tisha’s friends came. As word got around, other people from the building dropped in, books and food in hand.

“Hey, Reed,” a boy named Decker from the eighth floor called. “I hear you’re working for that author. The woman with the crow?”

“It’s not a crow. It’s a mynah. And if you
know
about Victoria McCoy,” Reed said with mock severity, “why haven’t you joined our fan club? We need more members.”

“Fan clubs are for rock stars,” he said nonchalantly, “not some weird old writer.”

“Well, she’s not old, but she
is
a little weird, and I
like
that.” The face distorted by anger, surrounded by a wild mane of salt-and-pepper hair, the mouth shouting in fury, popped into Reed’s head. She forced the image away.

“That’s because you’re weird, too,” Debrah said, glancing pointedly at Reed’s black skirt, shirt, and boots. “Where are you getting your wardrobe these days, Vampira?”

Decker, sprawled on the floor with his backpack supporting his head, said, “You’re nuts working for her. Carl Nordstrum was a friend of mine. And look what happened to him.”

“We don’t know that
anything
happened to him,” Reed replied calmly. “Maybe he just left school.”

Decker shook his head. “Not Carl. He was a lot more interested in getting an education than anyone I know. He’s the one who nagged me into finishing papers and studying for exams. He left for work at that writer’s house one morning and that was the last time anybody saw him. How do you explain that?”

“He just left school, that’s all.” But the words of the clerk in the administration building rang in Reed’s ears: “Carl Nordstrum wasn’t the type to just up and leave a job.” Reed shook her head to banish the voice and added, “If Carl worked as hard as you say he did, he probably got overloaded. Just got in his car one day and took off. It happens. If anything sinister had happened to him, the police would know, right?”

“Not if someone didn’t want them to. Someone really clever. Like psychopathically clever, for instance. And as far as I’m concerned,” Decker rolled over on his side and grabbed a handful of cheese balls from the bowl in Debrah’s lap, “the best candidate is someone who writes psychopathically clever novels like that stuff McCoy writes.”

“Oh, Decker,” Lilith said, laughing, “you’ve never even opened a McCoy book. You don’t know the first thing about them.”

“I know what I’ve
heard,”
Decker retorted, popping a cheese ball into his mouth. “And all I can say is, Reed is as crazy as McCoy probably is, to go to work there. So if anything happens to you, Reed, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“I consider myself warned,” Reed said. “But if anything happened to me, I wouldn’t be
around
to say you didn’t warn me. Thanks, anyway, Decker. Big of you.”

Her voice was calm, but her emotions weren’t. Carl had last been seen on his way to McCoy’s. That news should be worrying her. But it wasn’t.

Instead, she felt … excited.

Was this a little bit of the dark side about which McCoy wrote so well? Was it a place where someone like McCoy lived? Did the darker side excite the author as it excited Reed now?

Reed shivered. Maybe all writers were a little unbalanced. Maybe that’s what made their creative juices flow. After all, if McCoy were ordinary, she couldn’t write extraordinary books, could she?

If she was going to work for a writer, she’d just have to get used to mood swings, that was all. And stay
out
of desk drawers.

By the time everyone had gone and Reed had crawled into bed, she was exhausted, and asleep in five minutes.

It was so dark, she couldn’t see her own hands. She knew they were there because she could feel the dirt beneath her fingers, but even the bright emerald ring with its brilliant gold band had disappeared into the thick, velvety curtain of blackness surrounding her.

And the silence was as thick as the blackness. The only sound was her own labored breathing, in and out, in and out, a tiny bellows bouncing off the walls of the deep, dark, cold pit.

She was so thirsty. And so cold.

When she raised her head, she could see, so high above her, a glow of light at the mouth of the pit. On its edges, sitting in a circle, were a dozen vultures, their bright, beady eyes fastened on her, their ugly wattles blowing slightly in the night breeze.

As she watched, hugging her arms around her for warmth, one of the ugly birds moved
cl
oser to the edge of the pit and spread its wings, preparing to dive.

She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Her voice had dried up within her for lack of water, and she could not scream.

Wings outstretched, the bird dove into the pit, aiming straight at her.

Reed awoke shaking and drenched with sweat. She was freezing cold, and yanked the comforter up under her chin to get warm.

What a horrible dream! And familiar. So familiar. Had she had it before?

No, she remembered now. She hadn’t dreamed it, she had
read
it. The dream was a combination of two passages from two separate McCoy novels. Her dream had combined the imprisonment in the pit from
Pitfall
with the horrible birds from
Wings of Fear.

Reed shuddered. The darker side of her own mind had paired two of McCoy’s most frightening plots to create an even more terrifying image. How weird. How scary.

And yet …

Hadn’t she wondered if she
had
a dark side to her mind?

Now she knew.

She knew for certain.

And was pleased.

R
EED HAD RESOLVED NOT
to do any more snooping when she was at McCoy’s. On Tuesday and Wednesday, she followed her resolution diligently. McCoy, headphones hanging around her neck, disappeared inside her office each day when Reed arrived. Reed left at four o’clock both days. The author didn’t come out to say good-bye, but she was perfectly pleasant when Reed arrived. It was as if the ugly incident when Reed had been caught snooping had never happened.

Link was not happy when Rain showed up at the fan club meeting Wednesday night. Watching them greet each other warily, Reed thought, Link looks like he could
kill
Rain.

Rain didn’t seem to notice. Nor did anyone else.

Debrah wanted to know if Reed had made any progress in persuading McCoy to conduct an autograph session on campus.

“No. I’ve hardly seen her. She disappears into her office with those headphones on. She might as well be on another planet.”

Debrah looked smug. “It’s not like you thought it would be, is it, Reed?”

“No, it’s not,” Reed admitted reluctantly. “But I haven’t given up on talking McCoy into an appearance on campus. There’s no hurry.”

“Well, there’s a hurry about my material,” Jude said vehemently. “When are you going to give it to her? You’re not pushy enough, Reed, that’s your problem.”

Reed frowned. “Why don’t you do it yourself then, Jude?
You
take your writing to McCoy, get her opinion.”

“McCoy doesn’t do that,” Rain said quietly from his seat in the front row. “She says she’s not an editor, she’s a writer.”

Jude stared at him rudely. Then he said, his voice hardening, “Well, I guess Reed will just have to talk her into making an exception in my case, won’t she? McCoy is the reason I
came
to this campus. She’s
going
to look at my work. I don’t care what I have to do to see that that happens.”

Rain shrugged.

“I’ll try, Jude,” Reed said. Anything to shut him up.

Lilith read from McCoy’s novel,
Pitfall,
the tale of a man who spent hours in the dark of night digging a deep hole, then imprisoned in it the young woman who was blackmailing him.

Reed shivered involuntarily, reminded of her terrible dream.

“The pit was so dark that days blended into nights, and she could no longer keep track of the time. Her terrible thirst was murderous. To avoid going mad, she scratched pictures into the earthen wall with a sharp stick she found lying in the bottom of the pit. Working painfully, diligently, she created crude drawings of what life was like above her hellhole. Bare-branched trees, tall buildings, even a fountain spouting a spray of water, stick figures of her friends, her family. They were crude, but they served their purpose … reminding her that somewhere high above her, in the clean, crisp air and the bright, warm sun, life went on as usual.

“Without her …
”

When Lilith had finished reading, Rain said, “Not one of her better ones. Too passive. Nothing much happens.”

“How can anything happen,” Debrah countered, “when the heroine is stashed away in a hole in the ground.”

Something
could
happen, Reed thought, if there were vultures circling the mouth of the pit. Pushing away all thoughts of her dream, she said, “I liked it. I like the way she thinks about life while she’s down there. She’s completely separated from normal life, but she imagines a normal life for herself, every day.”

“Not me,” Tom Sweeney disagreed. “I like more action.” Ray Morrissey nodded agreement.

Link hadn’t read the book yet, so he said nothing. But Reed saw him shoot Rain a look of hostility when Rain spoke.

They closed the meeting early and hiked across campus to Burgers Etc. for what Jude called, “Sustenance before I sleep.”

In the restaurant, they were being silly, goofing off, when Link once again asked Rain about Carl Nordstrum, ignoring Reed’s obvious irritation when the name was mentioned.

Rain, too, was annoyed. “I’ve never understood,” he said coldly, “why everyone thinks I would know my mother’s business. It’s not as if we sit around all day talking. She spends most of her time in her office, lost in her work. If you want to know something about her business, ask
her.”

So, on Thursday, because Reed knew Link wasn’t going to let go of the subject, she worked up her courage and asked the author about Carl Nordstrum.

The author’s lips tightened. “One day, out of the blue, he called to say he wasn’t coming in. That he was leaving school. Out of the blue. I had no idea he was thinking of leaving.” She shook her head, the graying mass of hair swinging across her shoulders. “It’s just as well. I know he was stealing from me. You just never know who you can trust, do you?”

She said nothing about Reed’s snooping. She seemed to have forgotten the entire episode.