The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) (7 page)

But what was he
doing?

“I’m hungry,” she said, hoping to distract him. He was working on a fourth section of boards. “I need something to eat. You said you didn’t want me to get sick. If you don’t feed me, I will get sick.”

He continued to pound nails into the boards. “Later. Shut up.”

Tanner sank back against the couch, trying to think. If he went out to the kitchen to get her something to eat, maybe he’d leave the hammer behind, and she could get her hands on it.

But, she thought dismally, he’d never be that careless.

The four sections were completed, lying in wait on the floor. Holding half a dozen long, heavy nails at a time between the lips of the rubber mask, he left one section lying on the floor while he attached one section at each side, creating a lidless “box.” Then, with the “box” still lying on its back, he moved a handful of shorter boards from the leather chair to the floor and used them to seal first one end of the “box” and then the other.

It was such a bizarre sight, the figure in the green plaid flannel shirt wearing the gray, wrinkled, rubber mask, nails between its lips, the clumps of white hair bobbing as he hammered away, connecting the walls to each other, like someone fitting together the pieces of a giant jigsaw puzzle.

She would never be able to describe this scene to anyone and expect them to believe it.

Tanner watched intently. A box? He was making a box?

She stopped breathing. A box … if it had had a lid, it would have looked exactly like …

A coffin.

No.
No!

Tanner’s heart felt as if it were sheathed in ice, and her hands were so stiff she couldn’t flex her fingers.

Even when he stood the box upright, it still looked like a coffin.

She didn’t want to think about why he would be constructing a coffin.

While she continued watching with growing apprehension, he dragged the fourth wall over and attached that section not with nails, but with a set of large brass hinges.

Now the structure looked like a tall, narrow, upright box with a door. Instead of a lock, which Tanner suspected would have taken too long to install, he simply took a short, very thick piece of wood from the tool kit and screwed it into the equally thick edge of one wall. When he twisted the chunk of wood sideways, it barred the door from opening every bit as effectively as a lock.

The cuckoo clock struck the hour of eight. Tanner was astonished. She had been watching him work for two hours? Two
hours?

And Silly hadn’t arrived. Tanner was sure no one had come up the walk. There would have been movement on the screen. She would have noticed it.

So he hadn’t been lying. Something
had
happened to Silly. An accident? What, she’d burned her arm on the oven? Slipped on a freshly mopped floor and thrown her back out? Cut her hand on a glass that broke when she was drying it?

It had to be something like that. Couldn’t be anything worse.

But how did
he
know about the accident, whatever it was? Had he been watching the house, like one of those stalkers that seemed to be constantly on the news lately? And seen Silly hurrying off to a doctor with her burned elbow or bleeding hand or bad back? Was that how he knew?

Tanner’s hands felt clammy. “Tell me what that box is for,” she demanded. Only eight
A.M.
What time would Charlie come?

She didn’t want him showing up while this crazy carpenter was still holding that vicious-looking claw hammer in his hand.

“This is for you,” he said. He walked around in front of the box and the worm-like lips of his mask slipped upward. “Nice work, don’t you think? Considering the time constraints and all.”

“For me?” Tanner, her face almost as gray as his mask, shrank further back into the couch. “It’s for me?”

“Absolutely.” He pushed the chunk of wood straight up and pulled open the crude “door,” letting Tanner catch a glimpse of the interior. Small, so small. Not very wide, not very deep, only a few inches taller than he was. And dark. Small and dark.

Just like a coffin.

He swung the door shut and pushed the wooden bar down across it. “This is your Time Out booth,” he said cheerfully.

“Time out?” Tanner stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Time out, time out,” he said impatiently, waving one hand at her, “haven’t you ever heard of time out? Weren’t you ever disciplined as a kid? Didn’t you have to go sit in a corner? Weren’t you ever sent to your room to think about your misdeeds?”

Her mother hadn’t been much of a disciplinarian. No cookies for a week, that was about as tough as her mother got.

“Well,” he continued, this time more patiently, “this is where you’re going to go when you do something wrong.”

“Something wrong?”

“Is there an echo in here?” he shouted angrily. His voice sounded, then, vaguely familiar. “Quit questioning everything I say! Why don’t you just
listen?
When people don’t do as they’re told, they have to have time out.”

Tanner’s jaw dropped.

“If you do what I say, if you’re good as gold,” he continued, “you won’t have to go in there. But if you give me any trouble at all,” he spread his hands helplessly, “well, I’ll have no choice.” He gave the door of the box a gentle kick. “I’ll have to see to it that you’re properly disciplined. So!” he cried cheerfully, “we’re all set!” And dropping the hammer back into the open toolbox, he plopped into the leather chair.

Although she couldn’t see it, Tanner was convinced that a huge smile of satisfaction lit the face under the mask.

She sat up very straight on the couch. “I’m not going into that thing,” she said with false bravado. “I don’t care what you do to me, I’m not going in there. And you can’t make me.”

She was sorry the minute the words left her mouth, but it was too late.

In one eye-blinking instant, he was out of the chair and in front of her and grasping her sweatshirt with one fist while the other fist yanked on her hair. She cried out in pain, but he was already dragging her over to the box. Yanking the door open. Pushing her inside, face first.

The door slammed, taking the little bit of light with it, and Tanner heard the heavy chunk of wood being angrily flipped into place.

She was inside the tall, narrow coffin.

And she was locked in.

A
T THE SIGMA CHI
house, Charlie Cochran’s roommate, Mark, awakened to find Charlie sitting on the edge of his unmade bed, holding a piece of paper in his hands.

“Geez, Charlie, you look like hell!” Mark said, dragging himself upright. “Whatsamatter, somebody die?”

Charlie didn’t answer. He’d been awake all night, not even attempting to lie down and close his eyes. He’d alternated throughout the night between pacing the room or sitting on his bed or standing at the wide window overlooking a darkened campus brightened only by the walkway lamp posts and a few random lights still on in other houses along fraternity row. And he had read and reread the note signed with Tanner’s name, struggling to understand what it meant, as if he were trying to decipher a message written in code.

Mark rubbed his eyes. “What’s wrong, Charlie?” He was awake now, and the sight of his normally easygoing roommate, hair askew, clothes rumpled, unsettled Mark. The planet had to be off its axis if Charlie Cochran hadn’t slept like a baby. “Something happen to Tanner?”

Charlie looked over at Mark as if realizing for the first time that he wasn’t alone in the room. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, thoughtfully. Then he got up, scooped his jacket off the bed, and left the room.

Shrugging, Mark lay back down, deciding that if Charlie wasn’t willing to share his troubles, Charlie’s roommate might as well catch another forty winks. Wednesday … first class at nine … no rush … early yet …

Mark was asleep again in less than a minute.

Charlie, feeling as if he had just endured the longest night of his life, went first to Lester. Hurrying across the chilly, gray campus, empty of all but a few hardy early-risers, he thought about Tanner’s note.

I can’t stay in this house alone.
Tanner had written that?

It was her handwriting. He knew it well. They were constantly writing each other little notes, full of silly things: remarks about a class or teacher, the latest joke, plans for the evening.

But
why
would Tanner write
those
words? She had never, not once, expressed any fear about having that house all to herself. Tanner wasn’t afraid of being alone. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t afraid of anything, not even her father, a cold fish if there ever was one. Charlie liked that about Tanner, that she wasn’t afraid. Not an ounce of paranoia in her anywhere. He thought that probably came from practically raising herself.

So why would she suddenly decide she couldn’t handle living alone, and take off to join her mother in parts unknown?

She wouldn’t. She just wouldn’t.

The note was crazy. It made no sense.

But he had gone to the house and rung that doorbell until he’d thought his finger would fall off. Had heard the bell pealing inside the house, loud and clear. No answer. Even after he’d finally noticed the note, suspended from the mailbox by a clothespin, flapping in the wind like a miniature bedsheet, he’d continued to jab at the bell.

But Tanner hadn’t come running, that great smile on her face, apologizing for taking so long to answer because she’d been in the shower and hadn’t heard the bell.

Even if, for some bizarre reason, Tanner had decided she really didn’t want to stay in the house alone that first night, she would never have gone off to join her mother. Tanner loved Salem, loved being at college. She wasn’t wild about living with Dr. Chill, but she loved school and campus and everything that went with it. So she wouldn’t have left. She would have moved in with Jodie and Sandy, or tried to get a dorm room of her own.

And she would never,
never
have gone anywhere without calling him first. No way.

The whole thing was nuts.

Jodie and Sandy hadn’t heard from Tanner.

Charlie’s rugged, handsome face fell when Sandy shook her head and said, “Haven’t heard a word, Charlie.” She asked to see the note, held so tightly and for so long in Charlie’s left hand, the edges were crumpled like used tissue paper. Sandy read it and then silently handed it to Jodie.

“She wouldn’t do this,” Jodie announced flatly when her eyes had zoomed over the words. “She wouldn’t! It’s a joke, that’s all. Where did you find this?”

He told them.

“Well, someone else put it there,” Jodie declared. “Tanner didn’t.”

“It’s her handwriting,” Charlie said wearily, hating to admit it.

“Maybe she got scared, being alone,” Sandy offered. “That’s a big house, and the housekeeper doesn’t sleep over.”

“The housekeeper!” Charlie cried, striding over to the telephone nestled on a bedside table amid papers and books and framed photographs. “The housekeeper will know if Tanner got home okay yesterday. And if she wasn’t willing to spend the night there alone.” About to pick up the receiver, he stopped, a blank look on his face. “Only I don’t know her name. Tanner always calls her ‘Silly.’ You guys know what her real name is?”

They shook their heads. “But someone at the administration building probably would,” Jodie said. “If you called and said you needed to know the name of Dr. Leo’s housekeeper, they’d probably tell you. I think the faculty’s domestic staff is hired through Butler Hall, just like the maintenance staff is.”

Charlie quickly dialed the main office at Butler Hall, but there was no answer.

“Too early,” Jodie pointed out. “Listen, Charlie, why don’t you go back to the Sigma Chi house and sleep for an hour or so? You look terrible, and we can’t really do anything until you get that telephone number. You didn’t sleep at all last night, did you?”

He didn’t answer. But the faint shadows under his eyes and the beard stubble on his face answered for him. Still, he stubbornly shook his head no. “How can I sleep?” he asked miserably.

Jodie nodded. “Well, then, let’s go downstairs and get you some coffee, okay? And maybe an egg or two wouldn’t hurt. Then we’ll call Butler Hall again. By that time, someone should be there.”

Charlie didn’t move away from the telephone.

“Come on, Charlie,” Jodie persisted, pushing her glasses back up on her nose, something she did constantly when she was frustrated, “you know what Vince always says. When in doubt, eat. He’s right. It always works for me. And if you won’t eat anything, at least come have a cup of coffee. Our coffee here is guaranteed to keep you awake for at least the next twelve hours. That’s a promise.”

That worked, because Charlie knew he was going to need something to keep him awake. He wouldn’t sleep again, he vowed silently, until he had answers to all of his questions.

“Okay, I’ll go,” he said, “but you’d better be right about the coffee.”

Vince and Philip were already seated at a rear table in the small cafeteria in Lester’s basement. Although Philip reacted to Tanner’s note with the same disbelief that Jodie had, Vince wasn’t as certain that Tanner hadn’t written it.

“She didn’t like living with old Stiffneck,” he said, stirring his coffee with a pencil, “She never kept that a secret. So maybe she figured this was a good time to pack up and leave, since he wasn’t there to throw a fit and try to stop her.”

“In the first place,” Jodie said, “I don’t think he
would
have tried to stop her. He would have stood in the doorway with that supercilious look on his face and said something like, ‘Well, if this is your choice, Tanner, you’re an adult and I can’t stop you from making it.’ He’d do that before he’d ever admit that he actually wanted her to stay. And in the second place, Tanner wouldn’t have gone anywhere without calling one of us first, agreed?”

The doubtful expression on Vince’s long, narrow face remained. “She might not have had time to call. Or maybe she tried and your line was busy.”

“You’re missing the point,” Charlie said quietly. “I don’t think for a minute that she was trying to call any of us, because I don’t think for a minute that she was leaving. Not the house, not campus, not us. She wouldn’t, that’s all. She just wouldn’t.” He sipped hot coffee for a minute, then put the mug down and added, “We’re just spinning our wheels here. I don’t know what’s going on, but I don’t like it.” He glanced down at his wristwatch. “I’m calling Butler Hall. I need that housekeeper’s name and address.”