Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall) (12 page)

But that couldn’t be. It was a statue. Brass. Not alive, like Poe.

There was a knock at the door, sharp, insistent. Someone called her name.

Link.

“Get out, get out, get out!” Poe shrieked. He had stationed himself on the top of a lampshade.

Reed didn’t want Link to see this mess. He’d have a fit. She opened her mouth to answer, but couldn’t speak.

Why had those shelves fallen?

“Reed! Answer me!”

The door burst open, and Link came rushing into the room. “What the hell … ?” he began.

“It was an accident,” Reed said, finding her voice. “The shelves toppled. They were pretty shaky, and I was going through some books, and they fell …”

“On
you?”
He was still focused on the mess in front of him. “All of that fell on you?” He turned then, to face her. “Another accident? First the well, now this! Are you okay?”

She nodded, and forced a small laugh. “Yeah, I dove under the desk. Wish I had a video of that dive. Olympic quality, for sure.”

“Mind your own business!” the bird cackled.

“Oh, shut up!” Link said heatedly. His eyes had moved away again, toward the open window behind the desk. “Are you sure the shelves fell?”

“What?” Her own eyes went to the window then, and she realized what he was implying. It made her angry. Why did he always have to think the worst? But … hadn’t she seen the bird move, with her own eyes? It couldn’t have moved by itself.

“Someone could have reached in that open window and pushed those shelves over on you. Just like someone could have deliberately removed the cover from the well. If the shelves
were
shaky, and you said they were, it wouldn’t have taken much of a push.”

“That’s ridiculous! I would have heard something, I …” Reed stopped, drawing in her breath. She
had
heard something. Shortly before the shelves came crashing down upon her. She had thought it was squirrels. But it could have been someone in the bushes outside.

No! She wasn’t going to think that way. Stupid, stupid! It was an
accident.

The word “accident” rang in her head. The phrase “no further details” from the newspaper column about Sunny Bigelow’s death danced before her eyes.

Reed’s hands suddenly felt clammy. Her heart began hammering in her chest like a drum.

“Where’s your boss, anyway?” Link asked, making his way through the mess on the floor. “Isn’t she here?”

Reed followed him to the desk area, trying to take deep breaths to calm herself. “Yes, she’s here. In her office.”

Link turned around, gave her a skeptical look. “She didn’t
hear
this? What is she,
deaf?”

“She wears headphones while she works,” Reed said defensively. “Probably didn’t hear anything over the music.” But even she found that hard to believe. How loud did McCoy play that horror music, anyway? “As long as you’re here, you can help me put the shelves back in place.”

They had the shelves back in position and half the books scooped up in place when McCoy entered the room.

“What in heaven’s name?” she cried.

Reed, crouched on the floor, gathering up books, turned around. “The shelves fell,” she said simply.

Link cleared his throat.

“They
fell,”
Reed repeated, standing up, her arms loaded with books. “I’m surprised you didn’t hear anything. It made an awful racket.”

Instead of answering her, the author said sharply, “Why is that window open? It’s very cold in here. And that’s very dangerous, leaving windows open. Someone could climb in through it and steal things.” She hurried over to the window, slamming it shut and locking it. “You mustn’t do that again,” she told Reed. “People do take things, you know. If you’re not careful.” Then she noticed Link and said abruptly, “What is
he
doing here?”

She hadn’t asked if Reed was all right.

“I’m helping Reed clean up,” Link said, adding, “She
could
have been killed by those shelves, in case you’re interested.”

McCoy’s reaction was not what Reed expected. “Killed?” she repeated, her eyes shining with an odd, eerie light, “killed?” And she threw her head back and began laughing insanely.

R
EED AND LINK STARED
as McCoy let peal after peal of wild laughter ring out.

“Alert, alert!” Poe shrieked.

The author’s laughter stopped abruptly at Poe’s shriek. Her eyes filled with confusion, then cleared suddenly. Her face shifted into a calm, composed expression and she said in a perfectly normal tone of voice, “Why, of course you could have been killed. That would have been terrible.” Her eyes on Reed’s face, she asked, “Are you all right, dear? Edgar would be so angry with me if anything happened to you.”

Dumbfounded by the astonishing change in McCoy’s demeanor, it took Reed a moment to comprehend the name. Edgar? Oh … Rain.

“You really must be more careful,” the writer continued, beginning to wring her hands in agitation. “How would I ever explain to Edgar?” Her eyes took on the distant expression that Reed had seen before. “I like it here. I want to stay. But if Edgar saw this …” She waved her hands over the chaos in the room. Then she looked up at Reed and begged, “Please don’t tell him. You won’t, will you?”

“Mind your own business, mind your own business!” the mynah shrieked as Victoria McCoy’s face went white and her eyes went to the floor.

Rain’s voice just behind them demanded, “What’s going on?”

Taking pity on her, Reed said quickly, “She didn’t do anything, Rain. The bookshelves fell, that’s all.” But, remembering the noises she’d heard outside the window just before the shelves toppled over on her, there was less conviction in her voice than when she’d told Link the same thing earlier. “Your mother didn’t even know anything about it until she came in here from her office.”

“Fell?” Rain echoed skeptically, moving forward, his dark eyes on his mother’s face. “The bookshelves all of a sudden just keeled over? Had a heart attack, did they?”

Reed forced a small laugh. “I guess so. Maybe it was my fault. I was looking through some books. …”

Victoria McCoy’s head came up, fast. Her eyes narrowed and the pupils dilated. “You were snooping? Looking for my new manuscript, were you? Well, I don’t keep it in here, for your information! I know better now, thanks to the others.”

The sudden switch in her demeanor caught Reed off guard. The others? Was she talking about Carl and Karen? Maybe Carl and Karen hadn’t quit, after all. Maybe McCoy had caught them “snooping” and fired them, and they’d been too embarrassed to tell anyone. That would explain why no one had known they were leaving.

“I wasn’t looking for anything,” Reed said stiffly, and then remembered the clippings still displayed on the desk. She
had
been looking for something. In the uproar, she’d completely forgotten. If McCoy noticed the clippings, she’d guess that Reed had indeed been snooping, although not for the new manuscript.

“I’ll just get my things,” Reed said, and moved swiftly to the desk. Surreptitiously she scooped up the clippings and thrust them in her pack.

Rain’s voice was stern when he addressed his mother. “Apologize to Reed, or you’re going to have to go shopping for a new assistant again. You know how you hate that.”

“Yes, yes, I do,” McCoy said vaguely, her eyes on the bookshelves. “So hard to find people to trust. …” Turning back to Reed, she said, “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings, my dear. It was upsetting, seeing my beloved books scattered across the floor. You understand. You
will
come back, won’t you?”

Reed hesitated at the desk. Did she really want to come back? The house might be perfect for someone writing horror novels, but it didn’t seem so great for other people. She wasn’t learning anything about writing, or about how McCoy brought forth the dark side of her characters. Unless … unless she had been witnessing with her own eyes the dark side of the author herself. Those mood changes …

It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been warned. She’d had plenty of warnings, and she’d ignored them all.

Give it up now, she told herself. Before something worse happens.

But that part of her that had been drawn to the house in the first place stirred within her, binding her to the house. Don’t leave, it whispered, don’t leave.

Besides, if she quit, Debrah or Lilith would take her place so fast they’d be sending off sparks. If someone from the Victoria McCoy fan club was going to be working here, it might as well be Reed Monroe.

“I’ll be back,” she said. An involuntary shiver slid down her spine. Was she making a mistake? Suppose Link was right?

“You were outside just now,” Link said to Rain. “Did you see anyone out there?”

Rain shook his head. “No. But how long have
you
been here?”

Reed stared at Rain, startled. He was hinting that
Link
might have reached in through that window and given the shelves a hefty push? Had he lost his mind?

“I got here right after Reed was attacked by those books,” Link said, his voice harsh. “Why?”

Rain shrugged. “Well, you’ve got mud on your boots,” he said, “and there’s no mud out front. Only on the side of the house, where the water drips down from the eaves. Underneath that window is the muddiest spot.”

Link’s cheeks flamed. “Something you would only know if you’d been outside yourself, right?”

“I
live
here,” Rain said coldly. “Of course I’ve been outside.”

“Boys, boys,” McCoy admonished, “you sound like two little children out in the schoolyard. I can’t imagine why you’re going on so about the window. I told Reed not to open it again, and she won’t, will you, dear?”

Reed shook her head. But the movement did nothing to clear her mind. Everything around her seemed out of whack. No one was saying or doing the right things. Maybe that bump on the head when she dove underneath the desk had done some serious damage to her brain. Rain and Link each suspected the other of pushing those shelves down on top of her? That was so crazy!

“I’ll have Rain anchor those bookshelves,” McCoy said as Reed took Link’s elbow and pushed him toward the front door. “You won’t have to worry about them anymore.”

“Right,” Link muttered as they emerged into full darkness and started down the footpath, “but that doesn’t mean you won’t have something
else
to worry about.”

Reed’s ankle was throbbing painfully. Walking on frozen ground didn’t help. “Could you please turn on your flashlight?” Reed asked. “It’s black as coal out here.” When no light appeared, she added, “You
did
bring a flashlight, didn’t you?”

He hadn’t. “How was I supposed to know you were going to be buried up to your ears in books when I got here? It was after four. I figured you’d be done and we’d be back on campus before dark.”

Reed knew he was right. It wasn’t Link’s fault things had been so weird. But they couldn’t walk back to Faculty Row’s streetlights and house lights without something to guide them through the pine grove. “I’ll have to go back in and borrow a flashlight from McCoy,” she said, turning back toward the front door. “Wait here.”

She was almost to the door when voices raised inside the house slowed her steps. There was music playing, too, the volume high, so she couldn’t quite make out what the voices were saying.

The higher voice—McCoy’s—fading in and out: “Why are you getting so excited? … shouldn’t matter to you. … mind your own business …”

So that’s where Poe had learned the expression.

Then a deeper voice—Rain’s—mixed in with the loud music: “again … won’t stand for it … not this time. … watching you …”

Reed backed up on the snow-covered path until she was abreast of Link. “They’re … busy,” she said. “We’ll have to wing it. I think I know the path well enough. You walk behind me. It’s only a few minutes to Faculty Row. There’ll be lights there.”

“How busy can they be?” Link said irritably, although he began following her. “Too busy to lend us a flashlight? I’ll probably trip and break my neck. Wouldn’t both McCoys love that? She’d have new material for another book, and Junior would have a clear field with you.”

“Quit muttering and watch where you’re going,” Reed called over her shoulder. She had walked this path more often than Link, and moved swiftly, pulling ahead of him rapidly.

Something he had said stuck in her mind. “New material for another book.” What was it about that statement that set her teeth on edge?

She really could
not
see a thing. The path was rutted with frozen snow, and slippery. Every step she took sent knives up her bruised ankle. Twice, she had to grab a tree branch to keep from crashing to the ground.

She turned to look for Link, didn’t see him, called out, “Hey, slowpoke, hurry up!” But it was too cold to wait for him. All she wanted to do was get back to her room, bathe her sore ankle, wrap herself in a nice, warm robe, and crash on her bed.

She was at the very edge of the pine grove, only a few yards from Faculty Row, when she heard a noise off to her left. Snow crunching underfoot.

She turned her head.

Something was there. Something tall, and black, so that it blended into the trees like a wavering shadow.

“Link?”

No answer.

Reed peered behind her, searching the darkness for some sign of Link. How had she gotten so far ahead of him?

She glanced back into the grove. The black thing moved closer. Reed quickened her steps, calling out to Link to hurry up. They were almost to Faculty Row.

The black thing moved closer.

“Link?” Her voice rose. “Link!”

Reed’s instinct was to run, but her ankle hurt. And if she kept her eyes on the pine grove, trying to keep track of the shadowy figure, she couldn’t watch where she was going. She’d fall, and the black thing would swoop down upon her …

The very second that she thought that, the big, black shadow moved closer, lifted its arms wide, like bat wings, and swooped out from behind the trees …

Reed’s mouth opened deliberately in a loud, shrill scream. “Nooo!”

The black thing disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, between the trunk of the trees.