Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall) (17 page)

Dropping her raincoat on the floor, Reed grabbed the notebook, flipped the cover open, and began reading.

She was disappointed to find only one page filled with writing. She read it avidly.

The girl stood in the doorway, staring at her captor. Her green eyes welled up with tears as she realized that she had been betrayed.

“I trusted you,” she said, her voice reedy with shock. “I admired you, respected you. I trusted you. And all the time, you were the one. I defended you to others. And now you
…”

Her captor interrupted her. “But I am giving you a place in history. Can’t you see that? I am making you the heroine. Haven’t you always wanted to be the heroine?”

The girl hung her head. Her long, straight, lustrous hair brushed the shoulders of her black sweater. She wore only black now, copying her idol. Her green eyes reflected shame. It was true. She had always wanted to be the heroine.

“You were wrong to trust me. I didn’t ask you to. You volunteered. I shall kill you and then I shall write about it and everyone will love reading about what happened to you. Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted? Tell the truth, now. It is, isn’t it?”

The girl began backing away, until her back bumped up against the wall. Insanity was staring her right in the face. Total, complete madness … and there was nowhere for her to go.

And as her captor came toward her, the
s
hiny, wide-bladed knife raised high in the air, the girl knew that what her captor had said was true. She had fantasized about being the heroine of the books she admired so much.

And now she was going to die because of it.

The writing ended.

Reed’s heart was slamming against her chest violently. Long, dark, straight hair … green eyes … wearing black like her idol …

The manuscript dropped from her hands, landing on the floor with a soft slap.

McCoy’s new book was about
her.

And in it, she was going to die.

R
EED COLLAPSED INTO THE
desk chair, her body limp. No, no, it wasn’t true. It couldn’t be.

But it
was.

Madness … insanity … McCoy had disappeared into its depths, after all.

Reed forced her eyes around the room in a sweeping circle, searching for some sign that the author was in the house. McCoy had sent for Reed. And she had left the manuscript out. She had to know that once Reed had read it, she would fly from the house and never return. The opportunity to fulfill the words in the new novel would be lost forever.

So … why had she gone into her office, leaving the door open for Reed to escape?

Sitting up straight, every nerve in her body alert, Reed swept the room with her eyes again.

Poe’s cage was open.

Poe’s cage had never been opened before.

Where was the bird?

She heard the noise then, a wild, flapping sound, a rapping, steady and insistent.

“Poe?” she asked softly, standing up.

The flapping stopped.

“Poe?”

The sound began again. It was coming from the hallway.

I have to get out of here,
now,
Reed told herself. She couldn’t wait for Rain to come back. There was no time.

She put on the raincoat. Her movements were stiff and wooden.

Rain. Poor Rain. How was he going to take the awful news? He was so sure his mother was all right. Was … innocent.

The flapping in the hall grew wilder, more insistent.

Reed began tiptoeing from the room, scarcely breathing, terrified that at any second, McCoy would leap from behind a piece of furniture, shiny, silvery knife in hand.

She was almost to the front door when the mynah’s shrill shriek split the air.

Reed gasped and whirled. “Hush!” she cried when she spotted the shiny black bird circling the room. “Shut
up!”

But the bird aimed straight for her, circled her head, and then flew into the hall, where its wings began flapping wildly against a door.

Not the door to McCoy’s office. This one was closer. The cellar door, Reed remembered, from the tour when the fan club had visited.

Poe threw himself against the door repeatedly. He was making such a racket, beating the door with his wings and cawing wildly, Reed was sure McCoy would hear him and come rushing out of her office. If that, indeed, was where she was. Maybe she wasn’t in the house. Maybe she was waiting outside, just beyond the front door.

Yes, that was it! She had left the manuscript out, knowing Reed would snatch it up and read it and become so terrified, she would fly out of the house.

Where McCoy would be waiting for her.

That way, there would be no evidence
inside
the house.

Even in the throes of madness, McCoy was clever.

I can’t go out there, Reed thought, her eyes on the bird, so frantic to gain entry to the cellar.

Maybe Poe is trying to tell me something. Maybe he knows, with that weird sixth sense that some creatures have, that McCoy is waiting outside in the bushes for me.

Reed began walking cautiously toward the frenzied bird. The cellar. She could wait in the cellar until Rain got back. If she got lucky and the door locked from the inside, even if McCoy got tired of waiting for her and came looking, she wouldn’t be able to get to Reed.

Keeping her eyes fixed on the office door, further down the hall, Reed slowly, carefully, approached the bird.

He seemed to sense that she was going to open the door for him, and moved away from it, circling her head.

No sound from the office. No door opening, no crazed author racing down the hall, knife in hand.

Reed pulled the cellar door open. A blast of foul, stale, icy air rushed up to greet her. It was black as night inside, but there was a string hanging from the ceiling.

She yanked on it. A dim light flickered on. She could barely see. But it was better than nothing.

Poe flew past her and down, down into the cellar’s depths.

Once inside, Reed turned to check the door for an inside lock.

There wasn’t one.

And there was nothing in sight with which to bar the door. Nothing, either, to use as a weapon.

Still, she shut the door firmly, and turned around, facing down. McCoy might not think to look for her here. Or Rain would get back in time. Either way, the cellar was her only choice.

A sound from below, different from the flapping of Poe’s wings, brought her head up, her eyes wide with fear. She held her breath. McCoy? Down
here?

But the sound wasn’t threatening.

It came again, a feeble moan, followed by a faint, scratching sound.

Holding her breath, Reed moved carefully down the steep, wooden stairs, peering into the darkness.

There was something lying on the floor below her, beside the furnace.

A heap of clothing … an … arm? Legs?

Something at the top of the heap of clothing moved. A head, turning.

Reed jerked backward in terror, her senses reeling.

She waited a moment, steadying her nerves. Then she bent again and looked more carefully.

A jacket, dirty, but recognizable. Blood-red and white, Salem’s colors. Blond hair, badly in need of washing, but also recognizable. Thick, curly, Scandinavian blond …

And then Reed knew what that was lying on the floor of the damp, smelly cellar, next to an ancient black furnace.

Carl.

The person lying on the earthen floor of Victoria McCoy’s cellar was Carl Nordstrum, the writer’s missing assistant.

T
HE DAMP, MUSTY AIR
swirled around Reed, stinging her eyes. “Carl?” she whispered. “Carl, is that you?”

The figure on the floor roused itself, turned its head. The cheeks were slightly sunken, the eyes shadowed and dull. The ankles were tied together, but it was clear that the ropes were unnecessary. The listless figure probably didn’t have the strength to move.

A half-eaten loaf of bread lay at his side.

Reed barely recognized him. His face was gray with dirt, his hair matted. But she knew, clearly and sickeningly, that it was Carl Nordstrum. The clerk at the administration office who had thought him so good-looking would never have recognized him. Not now.

Bending low to avoid the ceiling beams, Reed made her way over to him. She crouched beside him. A tin pie plate with a shallow puddle of water in it sat near his elbow.

“Carl?”

His eyes were dull and glazed. But he lifted a hand to show that he was aware of her presence.

Tears of pity for him stung Reed’s eyes. The sounds she’d heard … the scratching. Not squirrels. Carl. Trying to make someone hear him, discover his terrible plight.

“We have to get out of here,” Reed said, even as she realized that she couldn’t lift him. He was skeletally thin, but still too heavy for her. And he didn’t look like he’d be able to walk out of the cellar on his own.

She would have to go get help. It had to be close to four o’clock, but Link wouldn’t be waiting for her, and Rain wasn’t home. The phone wouldn’t be working in this snowstorm. She couldn’t call the police. McCoy might be waiting outside, but that was a gamble she would have to take.

Reed felt sick. Every illusion she’d ever had about the “dark side” being exciting and fascinating vanished. There wasn’t anything fascinating about the gaunt figure lying on the earthen floor. What kind of madness had imprisoned him in this damp, airless hole?

But Reed knew the answer to that question. McCoy.

She had wreaked havoc on so many lives. Sunny’s, Karen’s, Carl’s. Had there been others before them? In California? Was that why McCoy had been sent to Brooklawn in the first place?

Yet there were times when she seemed so normal. It wasn’t surprising that the doctors had let her go. She had fooled them all. Even Rain.

“We have to be very, very quiet,” she told Carl, lifting his hand. It lay limply in hers.

“Carl,” she whispered, bending close to him, “I have to go get some help. But I’ll be back, I promise. I’ll be back, and get you out of here.”

“I don’t think so,” a low, gravelly voice said from the top of the stairs.

Gasping, Reed lifted her eyes.

She could see only an outline, but it was enough. A mass of unruly hair, the long, black skirt.

McCoy.

She had grown tired of waiting.

She had come for Reed.

T
HE FIGURE STANDING AT
the top of the stairs was a blur of light and shadow. But Reed could see that the hands were holding something. Her eyes strained to make it out.

The notebook. The hands were holding the new manuscript.
Betrayal.

The low, gravelly voice began speaking. “Now, we have to do this right, dear. You must say,” and Victoria McCoy’s voice began reading: “ ‘I trusted you. I admired you, respected you. I trusted you. And all the time, you were the one … I defended you to others … and now you … ,’ and then I interrupt you.” One finger tapped the open manuscript. “It says so right here. And we have to do it correctly.”

Reed gripped Carl’s hand tighter. Was there any other way out of the cellar? If not, they were trapped.

The figure descended one step.

Reed sat frozen on the cold, hard floor. Carl made a small, muted sound.

“And then
I
say,” McCoy continued, “ ‘But I am giving you a place in history. Can’t you see that? I am making you the heroine …’ ” She stopped reading then, saying harshly, “You
do
want to be the heroine, don’t you, Reed?”

“I just want to get out of here,” Reed said angrily. She didn’t let go of Carl’s hand. It was so lifeless. She was afraid he was dying right before her eyes.

“You’re not going anywhere.” The black skirt swished down the rest of the steps and their captor moved out of the shadows and stood over them. Reed refused to look up. She wouldn’t give McCoy the satisfaction. “I don’t
want
you to leave. It’s rude to leave before your host wants you to. Don’t you like the accommodations? I did my best to make them pleasant, Reed. But you can’t do much with the cellar in an old house, you know. Our place in California has a very nice basement, much more comfortable than this one.”

“You mean hostess,” Reed said rudely. “You said host. I would think a famous writer would use the right word.”

“I did use the right word,” came the answer, but the voice was no longer low and gravelly. It was no longer Victoria McCoy’s voice. It was low and resonant, the voice of a poet as it echoed throughout the darkness.

And Reed’s head came up and her eyes took in the graying wig as it was pulled from the shoulder-length dark hair, saw the long black skirt ripped away from the jeans underneath, saw the skirt tossed aside and puddled in a corner.

She was not looking up into the face of Victoria McCoy.

She was looking up into the face of Victoria McCoy’s son.

Rain had returned.

But not to save her.

“Rain?” Her own voice quavered. She let go of Carl’s hand and stood up. “What’s going on? Why … what is Carl doing down here? He’s very sick. The air down here … it’s foul … he needs fresh air.”

He wouldn’t let Carl die. Not Rain. He wouldn’t.

“Oh, yes, I would,” he said, reading her mind. “Of course, you thought McCoy had dumped him down here, didn’t you?”

“No, I …”

“Of course you did. Exactly what I had in mind. The woman is mad as a hatter, right, just like Poe says? I suppose
he
brought you here. My mistake. Never should have brought him with me when I paid my nightly visits to my tenant here.” He gave one of Carl’s legs a casual kick. Carl groaned softly. “Poe likes it down here. He gets very excited when he knows we’re going to visit Carl in his little hideaway. But,” he smiled at Reed, “you two don’t seem happy with it.” He sighed. “Too bad. I’m afraid you’re going to be here a while.”

Reed backed up a few steps, until her back came to rest on one of the old beam supports, a thick, wooden floor-to-ceiling post. It shook when she leaned against it, and small chips of wood fell to the floor.

Everything fell into place then. Looking at Rain’s almost-perfect face, she realized that the eyes were cold and empty. Why had she never seen it before?