The Whisperer (Nightmare Hall) (7 page)

The
first
part? Well, no point in hearing the second part. Because she was never in a million years going to be able to perform the first part. No way.

“You’ve got the wrong person,” she said quietly. “I can’t do it. I
can’t!”

“Of course you can. And you will. The snake is perfectly harmless. Well, almost. Its poison sacs have been removed. Of course, it still has fangs, so a little caution might be in order.”

Her pulse, already far too rapid, skipped a beat. “Why do you want the snake?” she asked hoarsely.

“It’s just a joke. A joke, that’s all. No one’s going to get hurt. You’ll put it in the bag and then you’ll take it to Lester, sixth floor, room 620. That’ll be unlocked, too. You’ll open the door and take Mariah out of the bag, loosen the loop around her neck, toss her into the room and close the door. That’s all there is to it. Piece of cake.”

Shea’s jaw dropped. “You’re kidding! You want me to steal a snake and throw it into somebody’s room in the middle of the night? What
for?”

“I told you, it’s a joke. Harmless fun. It’s not like I’m asking you to commit murder, Shea. Chill out.”

“Whose room is it?”

“You don’t need to know that. Not important. I suppose you can find out easily enough, but it won’t make any difference. You have to do it. Or I will take your first feature role in films straight to the administration, along with your fingerprints on copper. I’m sure you realize that they’ll be immediately turned over to the Twin Falls police.”

The police … prison … “How do I know you really have them?”

“If I didn’t, how would I know you were on the tape? That those were your dried bloodstains on the paperweight?”

Shea sagged back against the boulder. “If I do this” … but of course she wasn’t going to, couldn’t … “if I do this, will you give me the tape?

“I will. I promise.
“

Shea laughed harshly. She’d always laughed when they got to this part in the movies. Why would anyone be dumb enough to trust a blackmailer?

Now she knew the answer. It wasn’t a matter of trust. It was a matter of having no other choice.

Still, something stubborn inside her made her say, “I don’t
have
to do what you say.” She said it slowly, thoughtfully, as if she were thinking out loud. “I can go straight to the administration and tell them the truth. And take my medicine.”

“Maybe you could have before Dr. Stark ended up in the hospital. Maybe they wouldn’t even have expelled you. Just put you on probation. But now
…
well, use your imagination.”

Shea swallowed, hard. As long as he was willing to give her the tape and the paperweight, maybe she still had a chance to turn things around. She’d do what he said, then if he kept his word, she’d destroy the paperweight and the tape when she got them. It wouldn’t be like she was destroying valuable evidence. Both pieces of evidence pointed to
her,
and
she
hadn’t bludgeoned Dr. Stark.

“Are you
sure
that’s all I have to do … get the snake and take it to Lester? Then you’ll give me the tape?”

“I will,”
the voice repeated.
“Honor among thieves and all that. Do as I tell you, and the tape is yours.”

There was a slight rustling sound in the woods behind her, then silence.

“Are you still here?” Shea asked uncertainly. “Where will I meet you so you can give me the tape?”

No answer.

He was gone.

She had her orders. Now, all she had to do was decide whether or not she could carry out the task assigned. And if she decided she couldn’t, she’d have to come up with a way out.

Any way you sliced it, she was in for twenty-four hours of agonizing, of not eating, not sleeping, no peace, no quiet, no safety, her nerves shrieking.

Shea stood, glancing through the woods and up the hill toward faint lights shining from Nightmare Hall’s windows. It seemed so ironic, so unfair, that Tandy, sleeping in that creepy old house, was far safer, after all, than Shea was.

T
HE GIRL SITTING BEHIND
the reception desk at Lester looked up without interest when Shea entered the deserted, tile-floored lobby the next morning. “Up early, aren’t you?” she said irritably. Her nap had been interrupted.

“Who’s in room 620?” Shea asked abruptly.

Without checking, the girl answered, “Bethany Briggs and Annette Driscoll.” Then she closed her eyes again.

As Shea headed back to her own dorm, she thought about the two girls. Shea knew both girls, although not well. Bethany was a pale, quiet girl with straight blonde hair, who never spoke up in class. Annette was just the opposite: tall, gorgeous, very outgoing, and popular. Some people called the roommates “The Odd Couple” because they were so very different. And yet they seemed to be good friends.

Which of them, Shea wondered as she turned to leave, was the target of tonight’s practical joke? Would one of them really find the snake stunt funny?

Or … had one of the roommates somehow made the whisperer angry? Was this his way of getting revenge?

Shea shook her head. Thinking that way was dangerous. Because if she believed it was anything more than a simple, harmless practical joke, she’d never be able to go through with it. It was going to be close to impossible as it was.

“Whatever you’re thinking about, it must be heavy stuff,” an amused voice said from behind her as she reached out to pull Devereaux’s wooden door open.

Coop. Standing before her as she turned around. He was smiling, as if he was glad to see her. “How about breakfast?” he suggested. “Maybe food will snap you back to reality. Not in the dining hall, though. Mrs. Doyle didn’t raise stupid children. Feel like hiking up the road to Burgers Etc.? They make a mean omelet.”

She hadn’t planned to eat. Now that she knew who was in room 620, she had planned to do nothing on this beautiful spring day but hide in her bed, talking to no one, trying to gear up for what she had to do at midnight.

But … shouldn’t she be acting normal? If she hid out all day, there would be questions from her friends. “What’s wrong, Shea?” “Are you sick, Shea?” She could hardly say, “Well, it’s like this, I need all my energy for this disgusting thing I have to do tonight if I don’t want to end up in prison.”

“Breakfast sounds great,” she said, hoping Coop wouldn’t pick up on how phony that sounded. How sensitive was he, anyway?

Sensitive enough, she learned a short while later to notice that she wasn’t eating anything.

“You okay?” he asked, looking at her intently.

Leave me alone, she wanted to say. Don’t get mixed up with me. You think I’m something I’m not. Everyone does. The truth is, I’m in a whole lot of trouble and I don’t want to see the look on your face when you find out what a mess I’ve made of things.

She didn’t say any of that. All she said was, “I thought I was hungry, but I’m not.” And then she surprised herself by bringing up a subject she had thought she didn’t want to discuss. The words just slipped out of her mouth before she could stop them. “Have you heard any more about Dr. Stark?”

Coop shook his head, sending a strand of dark hair sliding across his forehead. He pushed it back impatiently. “She still can’t walk. That’s all I know. Haven’t heard anything about the summer job in the lab yet, either.”

“Dinah said Dr. Stark wasn’t wild about Sid,” Shea said. “Isn’t that a good sign? For you, I mean?”

Coop laughed. “She yelled at everyone in the lab, not just Sid. And she came up behind me in the hall one day and heard me telling Tandy I wondered where Stark parked her broomstick.”

Coop’s expression turned grim. “My whole life flashed before my eyes when I saw her standing there. I could feel that summer job slipping right out of my hands and into Sid’s. But … that was before she ended up in the hospital. Now, who knows? Maybe someone who doesn’t hate my guts will make the decision.”

Shea almost asked Coop then about the snake named Mariah. He’d know whether or not the snake really was harmless. Or she could always ask Sid. Even Dinah, who often stopped in the lab to visit Sid and talk to the animals.

But she couldn’t ask any of them about it. Because if she did, who was the first person they’d suspect when the snake turned up missing? Their good friend, Shea Fallon.

Burgers Etc. was packed with sleepy people sipping coffee, wolfing down pancakes, talking about weekend plans. Shea’s eyes scanned the long, narrow diner, wondering again what kind of face she should attach to the sinister, whispering voice. Was it a tall voice, a short voice, was it thin or fat, blonde or brunette, male or female. … ?

The last thought startled her. She’d been thinking of the deep whisper as male. But of course it could be female. How could you tell from a whisper?

“Feel like taking in a movie tonight?” Coop asked casually as they got up to leave.

Oh, gee, I’d love to, she answered silently, but I’ve got a snake to steal. Aloud, she said, “Can’t, sorry. I have to … study.”

“Tomorrow’s Sunday,” he pointed out. “No classes.”

“That doesn’t mean I don’t have to study,” she said sharply. Why couldn’t he just take no for an answer? Hadn’t anyone ever told him no? “I’m really behind,” she added in a milder tone. It wasn’t
his
fault she was such a wreck. “I need every spare moment I can find, or I’m not going to make it through finals.”

“Dinah will be disappointed.” He held the heavy glass door open for her and they left the diner. “She and Sid are going, too. I told her I’d try to talk you into making it a foursome.”

Sid and Dinah? Sid and Dinah almost never doubled. Sid didn’t like “sharing” his time with Dinah. At least, that’s what Dinah always said.

“Dinah will understand,” Shea said. “She gets straight A’s without blinking an eye, but she knows I don’t.”

“She wasn’t getting an A in bio,” Coop said, taking Shea’s hand to lead her across the highway.

Shea looked up at him in surprise. “She wasn’t? How do you know?”

“Sid told me. He said Dinah was really shook. Apparently, she’d argued with Dr. Stark about two of her grades this semester, thought they were unfair. But Stark refused to budge.”

Frowning, Shea said, “She never told me that.”

“Tell you the truth,” Coop went on, “I think Dinah’s a little bit relieved that Stark won’t be finishing out the year. Probably thinks she’ll have a better chance with someone else. Dinah would never say that, of course. She’s too nice.”

No, she’s not, Shea thought, remembering the night at Vinnie’s when they’d all been raking Dr. Stark over the coals. Dinah had been as vocal as anyone in her criticism of the teacher. Shea hadn’t thought anything of it then, because they were all doing it. Now, she realized that it
had
been unlike Dinah to be so critical. She must have been really upset about her grade in Dr. Stark’s class.

But then, why not? Hadn’t they all been? Tandy was the only one who’d defended Dr. Stark.

“Let me know if you change your mind about the movie,” Coop said as he left Shea on the steps of the campus library. “I’ll be at the lab all morning. You can call me there.”

At the mention of the lab, her face must have paled, because he quickly added, “Shea? What’s wrong?”

“Headache,” she said quickly. “See you.” She turned to run up the steps and inside the dim, cool library, where she could sit and think in privacy.

She stayed in the library for a while, until she began to feel as if she were suffocating. Then she went out and hiked along the river behind campus. It amazed her that people passing by called out to her, wanted to stop and talk, asked her about her weekend plans. As if she were still the same, normal, popular person she’d been when the week began. Couldn’t they
see
that she wasn’t?

Later that day she played tennis with Tandy, who finally became so exasperated with Shea’s sloppy, erratic playing that she threw down her racket in despair.

While playing, Shea remembered how often they’d seen Dr. Stark on the courts. Although the teacher had exchanged the dowdy print dresses for tennis whites, her hair was still severely pulled back from her face, her mouth set in a grim, straight line as she fought to win. She had never looked to Shea as if she were having any fun at all.

Shea couldn’t help thinking then that Dr. Stark might never play tennis again. The thought had depressed her so profoundly, she’d missed a perfect serve from Tandy, who had groaned and given her a disgusted look.

Later, she had dinner with Tandy and Linda Carlyle at Hunan Manor in town, but turned down their invitation to attend a sorority party with them. Then she went back to her room to lie on her bed and watch the hands on her clock radio approaching the time when she would have to leave for the lab.

Suddenly she found herself standing outside the door to the Animal Behavior Studies lab, her hand on the round brass knob.

The hallway was dark and deserted, the building quiet. The teachers and teaching assistants and laboratory technicians and student volunteers, like Coop and Sid, were, at the witching hour on a spring night, partying or watching television or seeing a movie or listening to music or reading or, maybe, sleeping. The reptiles and the spiders and the mice and the rats were, like her, on their own.

There was no sound from inside the lab.

Shea turned the knob and the door, unlocked as the whisperer had promised, opened.

When she had closed the door behind her, she switched on her small plastic flashlight. She had never been in the lab before. Forcing herself to take a few slow deep breaths, she glanced around, using the flashlight to study the room.

There were the mice, in their cages on tables to her right, the larger rats in cages beside them.

She moved hesitantly into the room until she was standing beside a long, narrow table with a bottom shelf. She saw the bags on the shelf before she could work up the courage to study the table’s contents.

Cages. Two, three, four.