The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) (6 page)

She went, then, to the heavy wooden door. Rattled the brass knob, pulled, tugged on it, but it was no use. The rest of the house was definitely locked away from her. Frustrated and frightened at the thought of spending an entire night in this room that she hated so, she delivered a vicious kick to the door, forgetting that she was in her bare feet. All that did was send a shaft of pain up her leg.

Limping slightly, she returned to the leather chair and sank down into its cool, slick folds.

“I don’t know what to do,” she said aloud. “I Do Not Know What To Do.”

Was he really going to keep her imprisoned in this room? There was nothing to eat in here, nothing to drink, although there was a tiny sink in the lavatory where she could at least scoop a handful of water from beneath the faucet. She had only had a sandwich and chips for dinner. She’d be hungry soon. The thought of not being able to meander into the kitchen and fix whatever she pleased, whenever she pleased, began to sink in.

When she became hungry, she couldn’t go to the kitchen and grab something to eat.

Her bare feet were cold, but she couldn’t run up to her bedroom and grab a pair of warm socks.

She couldn’t go into the bathroom down the hall from her bedroom and brush her teeth or wash her face.

She couldn’t go anywhere, and she couldn’t call anyone to come and let her out, because
he
had taken the telephone when he left.

It was very, very dark outside. Only a tiny glimmer of pale yellow from the corner street lamp was reflected in the skylight and windows.

Tanner got up and turned on another lamp. Then another, until all three of the small desk lamps on the end tables and her father’s desk were glowing.

It didn’t help.

She walked over to the fireplace. It was no longer used. There was no burned ash lying on the clean white stone. Her father had said, “The smoke would be harmful to the instruments” and she’d had to bite her tongue to keep from replying, “Then why have a fireplace in here?” She had decided the room hadn’t always been a music room, hadn’t always been soundproofed, had perhaps at one time been some nice family’s living room, a room filled with laughter and light and a roaring fire blazing in the fireplace, with windows placed at normal heights to look out upon the world and let the world look right back in.

To the left of the fireplace was a large wood-box with a hinged lid. Tanner lifted the lid. No wood inside, of course. Why have wood for a fireplace you’re never going to use?

She could have used a heavy log as a weapon, waiting behind the door with it in hand until he returned and then slamming it against his head as he entered. Right now, that kind of action seemed like her only hope. But … there was no wood, and she didn’t see anything else in the room to use as a weapon.

The lid dropped with a thunk that startled her in the deafening silence of the room.

She had just turned away from the woodbox when a movement on one of the square, grayish screens above her head caught her attention. The picture was so small, she had to squint to see clearly.

And her heart leaped for joy. Charlie! Hurrying up the front walk! At this hour?

Of course. They hadn’t had their good night talk. They had agreed that they couldn’t sleep until they’d told each other good night. And tonight, the intruder had prevented her from having that ritual conversation with Charlie. He must have called, probably more than once. She hadn’t heard the phone ring, and couldn’t have answered even if she had heard it.

So he’d become worried. He knew she was there alone. He must be frantic, wondering why she hadn’t answered the phone.

Tanner ran to the door, whispering, “Charlie, Charlie, you’re such a good guy! You’re the best, Charlie!” She raised both hands, curled into fists, and began pounding with all of her strength. She kicked, too, first with one foot, then the other, anything to make noise, anything to break the awful silence and tell Charlie she was in the house, yes, she was, she was here, all he had to do was come in and get her.

“Charlie!” she screamed, “Charlie, I’m in here, in the music room!”

Continuing to pound and kick and shout, she turned her head sideways, glanced up at the camera, and saw Charlie reading the note the intruder had pinned to the mailbox.
Her
note, saying she was leaving to join her mother.

It
wasn’t
her note. She hadn’t written it willingly. But would Charlie know that?

Tanner stopped shouting, stopped pounding and kicking, and stood very still, her eyes on Charlie in the tiny screen. He looked like a miniature person and in the grayness of the screen, his wonderful dark eyes that she loved seemed colorless.

“I didn’t write that, Charlie,” she muttered from between teeth clenched with tension. “You have to know I didn’t write that.”

He must have read it a trillion times, it seemed to her. Just kept reading it over and over, didn’t even shake his head, just kept his eyes on that piece of paper, clearly unable to comprehend the words.

“I don’t blame you, Charlie,” Tanner whispered, watching, holding her breath. “You just can’t believe that I would take off for Hong Kong or Japan or wherever without calling you first, and you’re right, I never would, never! So
think
about that, Charlie! Ask yourself
why
that note supposedly from me would be there when I would never do something so stupid.”

Finally, Charlie did shake his head. He pulled the collar of his leather bomber jacket higher up around his chin, and gave his head another shake. He looked down at the note in his hands again. Looked up, at the front door, as if he expected it to open at any second and Tanner would be standing there, laughing and saying, “Gotcha!” Looked down at the note again. Began to turn slightly sideways …

“No!” Tanner screamed at the top of her lungs, “No, Charlie, you can’t leave! Wait, don’t go! Oh, God, please don’t go! I don’t want to stay here alone. Please, Charlie,
think
about the note! It’s not true, you
know
it can’t be true, because I would never go and leave you without calling, I wouldn’t, you
know
that!”

But as she stood there screaming, frantically waving arms at him that she knew he couldn’t see, he continued to turn away from the door. Then, still holding the note, he took a step forward, away from the house, then another and another.

“No, Charlie, don’t, don’t go!” Tanner screamed, tears of frustration gathering in her eyes. “I’m here, I’m
here,
Charlie, oh, God, why can’t you
hear
me?”

Charlie stopped, and for just one breath of a second, Tanner thought he might somehow have heard her. But instead of turning around, he began walking again.

And although Tanner continued to shout as loud as she could, jumping up and down and waving her arms frantically, begging Charlie to wait, he continued on down the walkway until he was out of camera range and had disappeared from sight.

With a loud, pained wail of defeat, Tanner sank to her knees on the soft, thick, turquoise carpet.

T
ANNER DIDN’T KNEEL ON
the carpet for long. The image of herself, crouching on the floor in tears, revolted her. And she couldn’t stand the thought that the intruder might return at any moment and find her in such bad shape. Whatever it was he was looking for with this crazy plan … satisfaction, he’d said, whatever that meant … she wasn’t about to give it to him so soon, like an early birthday present.

She stood up, wiping her eyes on a bedraggled tissue she unearthed from the pocket of her sweatpants. Glancing at the German cuckoo clock above the fireplace, she saw with dismay that it was only one
A.M.
! Hours yet to get through before morning arrived. Hours!

Oh, Charlie, why didn’t you
hear
me? she cried silently.

The room had grown colder, and her bare feet felt as if she were standing on the frozen pond behind campus. She went into the tiny powder room, hoping for a nice, warm towel, but there were none. Only a handful of crisp paper towels, too small and stiff to substitute for socks.

She cupped her hands under the faucet in the tiny sink, temporarily quenching her thirst. “I would kill for a toothbrush,” she said aloud, but had to settle for scrubbing her teeth with a dampened finger. A sound like distant thunder from her stomach reminded her that she was hungry, but the kitchen might as well have been a thousand miles away for all the good it did her.

When she left the powder room, she told herself that the best way to make the night pass quickly was through sleep. If she lay down on the couch and closed her eyes, when she opened them again, it would be morning. Morning would surely bring help of some kind. Maybe the intruder had lied, and Silly was fine. She’d show up, bright and brash as always, and sooner or later, she’d discover Tanner locked in the music room and let her out.

And if Silly
wasn’t
all right, if she really had had some kind of accident and didn’t show up at all, Charlie, at least, would be back. Charlie wouldn’t believe that note, not after he’d thought about it. He’d come back. He
would.
If she wasn’t sure of anything else in the world, she was sure of that much.

Tanner lay down on the couch, but sleep was impossible. She kept listening for the sound of a key in the lock, telling her
he
had returned. She was cold, very cold. There was nothing in the room to use as a blanket. Her feet were like ice, even when she stretched the legs of her sweats down over her toes and tucked her feet underneath her. Unable to sleep, she was forced to think about her situation. Unreal, bizarre, but there it was. Time to face it.

She was locked in a soundproof room. No food. Nothing to keep her warm as the night grew colder. Shouts for help wouldn’t do any good, and she couldn’t reach the windows to pound on them to attract the attention of a passerby. No telephone. No housekeeper. No father, no mom, no hope of getting out of here on her own …

Tears of self-pity and fear stung Tanner’s eyelids.

No, dammit! If her crazy captor ever did come back, he wasn’t going to find her with tear-swollen eyes. No way.

She curled up into an armadillo-like ball on the narrow couch, and forced her eyelids shut.

Fear and emotional exhaustion finally took their toll and by thinking about Charlie, which comforted her, Tanner managed to doze fitfully.

The cuckoo had just struck the hour of six, semi-waking her, when the sound of the music room door being unlocked brought her fully back to consciousness. The skylight overhead revealed a dove-gray dawn. The room was as cold as a tomb. Shivering, hugging her arms around her chest for warmth, Tanner sat upright, her fear-widened eyes on the door.

The ugly gray mask peered inside. “Rise and shine!” he said. “Sleep well?”

“I slept fine,” she said defiantly. But she couldn’t stop shivering with cold. And fear, she had to admit. Her spine crawled at the sight of the repulsive rubber mask peering in at her.

“What’s the matter,” he said as he entered the room, “you didn’t find all the comforts of home in here? Such a nice room. I guess it is a little chilly, though. Too bad.” He walked over to her and bent down, the grotesque rubber mask only inches from her face. “You’re not going to catch a cold, are you? That’s not part of my plan. Maybe I can dig up a blanket for you tonight. Can’t have you getting sick on me.”

I’m not going to
be
here tonight, Tanner thought vehemently. I’m not spending another horrible night in this room.

He had left the door ajar. But when her eyes swung over to it, so did his. He laughed. “Go ahead, give it a shot,” he challenged her. He straightened up to stand over her ominously. “Two bits I get there before you do. And then I’ll have to punish you for trying to get away.”

Giving up, Tanner sank back into the couch.

He laughed again. Then casually, like someone out taking a leisurely stroll, he sauntered over to the door and reached out into the hall, retrieving with one hand a long, narrow board and pulling it into the room. Dropping it on the floor at Tanner’s feet, he moved back to the door to haul in a second board. Then moving quickly back and forth from the doorway to the hall, he brought more boards into the room and piled them atop the others, until several stacks of boards crisscrossed the turquoise carpet.

The last load of boards he brought into the room was made up of shorter pieces of wood. These he piled on the leather chair.

The last thing he lifted into the room and deposited on the floor was a red metal tool kit. Then he closed and locked the music room door again.

Tanner watched the door swing shut with a sickening sense of hopelessness.

Bending to open the lid of the tool kit, he took from it a large claw hammer and a plastic box. “Nails,” he said, waving the box at Tanner, who hadn’t moved from the couch. “Can’t put wood together without nails, right?”

“What are you doing?” she asked, keeping her eyes on him. There hadn’t been one single moment when she could have made it through that doorway. He’d been right there the whole time, gathering in his pile of boards. “What is all that lumber for?” When she first saw what he was hauling inside, she’d thought he might be planning to build a fire in the fireplace to warm the room. But the boards were too big. Much too long. Taller than he was.

“None of your business,” he said harshly, lifting one board and dragging it over into the middle of the room. Then he went back and got a second one.

She watched as he nailed the two boards together, and then nailed a third and fourth to the first two. He was fast and efficient, wielding the claw hammer as if it weighed no more than an ounce or two. He set aside the first section, which was no wider than the music room door, and began nailing another group of boards together.

“What are you
doing?”
Tanner cried again, when he had two narrow “walls” fastened together, had set them aside, and was beginning a third. “What
is
that?”

“You’ll see,” he said grimly, and continued pounding.

Tanner suddenly wasn’t at all sure she
wanted
Silly to show up.
He
wouldn’t like the interruption, and that claw hammer looked like it would make a nasty but very effective weapon. It wasn’t as if he’d never hit anyone on the head before. Tanner closed her eyes in pain at the thought of Silly being attacked, and had to quickly tell herself that her imagination was working overtime. Nothing like that could happen. It was too horrible.