Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall) (3 page)

She followed Rain up the path to the front door, where a woman stood waiting.

When they were inside, he said, “Reed Monroe, Victoria McCoy.” To Reed, he said, “You can call her McCoy. I do.”

The woman who closed the door and faced Reed bore no resemblance to the smiling photograph on the back cover of Victoria McCoy’s novels. That woman was young, pretty, well-groomed. The woman introduced as Rain’s mother had a pale, wide face with faint lines around the mouth, and deeply shadowed, sunken eyes. A wild mass of unkempt salt-and-pepper hair hung loose around her shoulders. She was dressed completely in black, in a long, full skirt and a long-sleeved, high-necked shirt, over which she was wearing a sleeveless black crocheted vest and a heavy, handmade necklace of orange and black beads. Matching heavy earrings tugged at her earlobes.

Instead of being shocked by the difference, Reed felt pleased. That woman on the book jackets looked so ordinary. A lot like her own mother.
This
woman
looked
like she wrote horror novels.

Perfect.

“She’s here about the job,” McCoy’s son said. He said it in a monotone, completely devoid of emotion. Reed wondered if she’d interrupted something.

“Oh, how wonderful!” the author cried. “You heard that I needed someone and you came? Now I won’t have to go through the administration to find a replacement.”

“McCoy …” Rain began, but his mother shushed him with a wave of her hand.

“Hush, dear, this is so perfect!”

My words exactly, Reed thought happily, sensing that the job was hers.

“I can’t tell you how much time you’re saving me,” Victoria McCoy said. “The bureaucracy, you know. All that red tape. Such a nuisance. So many questions. Come into the living room, take your things off. My son made a fire in the fireplace to take the chill out of this drafty old house. Tell me how you heard about the job.”

“I’ll get coffee,” Rain said, and disappeared.

Reed followed the author into the room to the left of the entry hall. It was long, narrow, and dark, the walls painted metal gray, the wood floors bare, the heavy draperies dark forest green, the furniture heavy and ugly, upholstered in a dark green print. The only warmth and light in the room came from the fireplace, where the promised fire blazed.

The room was cluttered almost to the point of chaos. Three of the walls were lined floor-to-ceiling with bookshelves that tilted slightly, from which books of all shapes and sizes spilled. A huge wooden desk at the rear of this room was piled high with papers and books and magazines. There was no computer anywhere in sight, not even a typewriter.

“I don’t work in here,” the writer said before Reed could ask. “I have a study, my own private little hideaway,” she waved a hand toward the hall, “behind the kitchen. You, however, will work in here.”

Reed’s joy at a statement that certainly sounded as if she already
had
the job collided with her disappointment that she wouldn’t be working side-by-side with the author. How was she going to learn anything if they were in separate rooms?

“They didn’t want to let me live here, you know,” the author said as she directed Reed to a seat on the ugly sofa. “They wanted me smack in the middle of campus, where I would be … what was the word the dean used … visible? Yes,
visible.
I suppose there isn’t any point in having a successful writer-in-residence if the residence that writer chooses is out of the public eye. But she finally gave in, your dean. I made it clear that solitude was essential if I were to continue my work.”

“I guess that’s why we haven’t seen much of you on campus,” Reed said.

“Last year, I did the campus thing quite a bit. I taught two classes and conducted seminars and held an autograph session in your little village of Twin Falls nearby. But then I fell ill.”

The illness must be why she had changed so much in appearance since the photo. Reed knew illness could do that. Her own grandmother had aged ten years after a bout with pneumonia.

Suddenly, an odd, falsetto voice from the dimmest corner of the room shrieked, “Get out, get out, get
out!”

Reed jumped, startled.

Victoria McCoy laughed. “That’s just Poe. He’s a mynah, but he and I both pretend he’s a raven. You’re familiar with the piece?”

Reed nodded. She had read Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” in high school. She had loved it, although “The Pit and The Pendulum” was her favorite piece.

So that was why Rain had such an old-fashioned name. Edgar Allan, for the writer. He must hate it. He didn’t look the least bit old-fashioned. Which was probably why he made everyone call him “Rain.”

“Poe goes everywhere with me, even on my rare excursions to town with my son. People stare at me, walking around with a bird on my wrist, but I don’t care. I’m past that now. Poe and I have long, lovely conversations together. Don’t you think he’s pretty?”

Reed swiveled on the couch to glance over her shoulder at the cage. All she could see were dark, glossy wings and a pair of beady, glittering eyes. “Leave her alone, leave her alone, leave her alone!” the bird shrieked.

“Poe, mind your manners,” his owner scolded. Then, as she turned back to Reed, her eyes suddenly went completely blank. She fell silent and began staring straight ahead, as if Reed weren’t there.

When the odd silence became uncomfortable, Reed said hesitantly, “Ms. McCoy? Is anything wrong?”

There was no answer until the mynah shrieked, “Alert, alert, alert!” Then the writer snapped back to reality as suddenly as she’d left it. She smiled at Reed. “You were saying?”

“I … I wasn’t saying anything.” Disconcerted, Reed wished Rain would come back. Where had he gone for that coffee, Twin Falls? The room was so dim, and she could feel a dampness now, smell a faint mildewy odor. A house this ugly and isolated, so unlike the other faculty housing, had probably stood empty. Maybe for a long time before Victoria McCoy and her son … and bird … had moved in.

Reed let her eyes roam around the room. A large, bronze object sitting at the very top of the bookshelves caught her gaze and held it. Another bird, looking almost as real as Poe. Its wings were spread, its head bent, its small, glittering eyes staring down upon them.

Reed shivered. It was beautiful, very realistic-looking, but there was something about it that made her skin crawl.

Rain appeared in the doorway. “McCoy, don’t we have any coffee? I’ve been looking all over for it. I thought you got some last week, in town. It was on the list.”

Later, Reed would go over and over in her head every word uttered by the writer then. But when it happened, she could only sit and listen in shock.

Victoria McCoy leaned forward, fixing her dark, deeply shadowed eyes on Reed’s. “People take things, you know,” she whispered. “My son doesn’t believe me, but it’s true. He gets very angry when I say things like that, but those people who worked for me, they were always stealing things. When I confronted them, as anyone would, they left. It’s so hard to trust anyone now.”

While Reed was trying desperately to digest what had been said to her, Victoria McCoy lifted her head, smiled brightly, and said, “Oh, I must have forgotten to get it, dear. I’m sorry. We’ll have tea instead.”

They had tea. While they sipped and talked about the job, Reed pushed the author’s strange, whispered words into a tiny, remote corner of her mind and left them there. She would take them out later and examine them. Maybe she’d heard them wrong.

Or maybe she hadn’t.

“How many hours would you need me?” she asked the woman sitting opposite her.

“Oh, as many as you can give me. I know how busy you young people are. I’m heavily into my new book and I desperately need someone to answer the telephone and my fan mail. I do get quite a lot of it. You
are
going to take the job, aren’t you?” Victoria McCoy added anxiously.

“I’d be honored,” Reed said emphatically. If the mildewy smell got to her, she’d cover her nose with a tissue, and if the bird drove her nuts, she’d cover his cage or tape his beak shut. But she was
not
going to pass up this opportunity. Jude certainly wouldn’t have, or Debrah or Lilith. No one in the fan club would. “And I know you need your privacy to work, so I promise I won’t get in your hair.” She got up to leave.

Victoria McCoy raised one hand to her hair. “My hair? Oh, yes, I’ve been meaning to have it cut. Rain sometimes hacks away at it for me, but he’s been so busy …”

“I’ll do it later,” Rain said, as if the remarks had made sense. He began pulling on a ski jacket, red like Reed’s. “Right now, I’m going to walk your new employee back to her dorm.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Reed protested, although she liked the idea. “I have a class at ten. It’s almost that now. I’m going straight there.”

“I have a ten o’clock, too. We’ll go together.”

Before they left, Rain turned to his mother. “You’ll be okay here, right? Not going into town, are you? If you need something, it can wait until I get back home.”

The woman’s mouth tightened and her eyes narrowed. “Please don’t speak to me as if I were a child,” she snapped. “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. You’re embarrassing me in front of this young woman.”

“Sorry,” Rain muttered. And Reed sensed that he was.

As they left the house, a flood of relief washed over her, taking her by surprise. She’d been so pleased earlier about the house being perfect for McCoy. Now, she couldn’t wait to get away from it.

What was
that
all about?

The house didn’t matter. She was going to be working for Victoria McCoy.

She couldn’t wait to take the news to the fan club.

Reed laughed softly to herself. They were
all,
every one of them, going to be furious with her. Jude would turn purple when he found out there’d been an opening with McCoy that he hadn’t known about. Debrah would probably shriek with rage, and Lilith would stamp her foot and shout, “But
I
wanted to work with her!”

They’d all be furious.

Just
how
furious remained to be seen.

O
N THE WAY BACK
to campus, Rain said, “I’m glad you took the job. Did she tell you that since we’ve moved to this quaint little place, none of her assistants has lasted much longer than the winter solstice?”

Reed had no idea how long a solstice, whatever that was, lasted.

Reading the expression on her face, he smiled and said, “One day. December 22, the shortest day of the year. Although I suspect that, to my mother’s assistants, it might seem like the longest day. I’m exaggerating, something I get from her. They worked for her longer than one day. But she can be difficult.”

Reed made no comment, but a twinge of annoying uneasiness nagged at her. She didn’t want anything spoiling her excitement. Difficult? What exactly did that mean?

“She wasn’t always like this, you know. It’s just been since her illness.”

“Was she in the hospital?”

He nodded. “Briefly. Basically, she was exhausted. Overwork. If she seems a little foggy sometimes, it’s the medication she takes. It’s the only way she can relax. The doctors warned us that there could be a few side effects. I hope you can deal with her mood swings.”

That explained the blank look, the whispering.

“She’s brilliant, you know. But she’s always writing. Even when she’s not at her typewriter or word processor, she’s writing in her head. So her brain never gets to relax, to rest. It’s not her fault. That’s just the way it is. And her circuits finally got so overloaded, she shorted out. That’s the way the doctors put it, anyway.”

Reed didn’t know what to say. It must have been awful for him.

“She’s better now,” Rain said hastily as they came out of the grove of pines and headed down Faculty Row. “I haven’t scared you off, have I? She really needs someone to … to help her out with the work.”

Reed could have sworn he’d been about to say that McCoy needed someone to “keep an eye on her.” But he couldn’t have been. Hadn’t he just said she was fine?

“No, you haven’t scared me off,” she assured him, squelching her uneasiness. “I wouldn’t pass up this opportunity for anything. But everyone else in the fan club is going to hate me.

He looked interested. “Fan club?”

“I started one on campus.”

“Sounds like fun. Can anyone join?”

“Anyone who’s read her books.” Reed laughed. “You must have grown up on them. I’m sure you’d qualify. Interested?”

“Absolutely. The classes I’m taking aren’t really much of a challenge, and I get bored with too much free time on my hands. Now that McCoy’s better, she won’t let me help her. She says I make too many cracks about how writing for a living stinks.”

Reed was pleased. Maybe the others would be so thrilled to have McCoy’s son as a member, they’d forgive her for getting the job before they’d had a crack at it.

“Wednesday nights, seven-thirty, in basement room C at the library,” she told Rain.

“Great.”

They were only a few feet from the science building, where Reed had a class, when Link burst out of the building. He stopped short when he saw Reed. “There you are! I was looking for you.” His eyes narrowed when he saw that she wasn’t alone.

Neither was he. Lilith, Debrah, and Jude were right behind him. Lilith, Reed noticed, was clinging to Link’s elbow as if she were afraid it was about to fall off. “You were looking for me? What for?”

“I’ll tell you when we’re alone,” Link said testily, watching to see if Rain would take the hint.

Rain didn’t. He stayed right where he was. There was a moment’s uncomfortable silence before Reed remembered her manners and introduced everyone.

“I’ve seen you around,” Rain told Link politely. “You play basketball.”

Link nodded brusquely. “Haven’t seen you, though. You don’t play?”

“This is Victoria McCoy’s son,” Reed said sharply.

“What, authors’ sons don’t play ball?” Link said, arching an eyebrow.

Reed flushed. “I didn’t say that. I just meant … oh, never mind.” She didn’t owe him an explanation. But she couldn’t resist adding, “I’m going to work for her. McCoy. As her assistant. Isn’t that fantastic?”