Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall) (15 page)

She was surprised to be kissing someone other than Link. An hour earlier, she might have felt guilty about it. But not now. Link had stayed behind with Lilith. Now she was here with Rain. End of story.

And then she forgot about Link altogether.

The first thing she did when she got back to her room was check for telephone messages.

The note was on the dresser.

You didn’t call Karen Overmeyer,
Tisha had written accusingly.
So she’s coming to see you. Taking the bus all the way from Baracca, so it must be important. Wants to meet you in front of the library at eleven. Be there, so we can get her off our backs!
There was a P.S.
She said to tell you she looks exactly like her sister and she’ll be wearing a purple raincoat.

Reed glanced at the clock on her bedside table. Almost eleven now. So late! Why would Karen be coming all the way to campus this late at night? Couldn’t it have waited until morning? What could be so urgent?

Reed hated the idea of going back out into the dark, cold night, back into that pelting sleet. But she couldn’t just ignore the message. Karen would be waiting for her.

Donning an extra sweater under her jacket, Reed reluctantly left the room.

There was no one in front of the library. Although it was open until midnight on week-nights, and the lights were still on, not many people were inside. Reed went in and checked, thinking one of them might be Karen, seeking refuge from the terrible weather, but there was no tall, thin, blonde girl in a purple raincoat.

By eleven-fifteen, she still hadn’t arrived.

This is ridiculous, Reed thought, annoyed. I’m standing out here freezing my buns off for some girl I don’t even really want to talk to. She’s going to tell me things about McCoy that I don’t want to hear. I’m going back to my room, where it’s warm.

But then Reed hesitated. Karen Overmeyer was coming all this way. Maybe the bus was late because of the sleet-slickened roads.

Ten more minutes. Reed would give her that much and no more. To make the time pass more quickly, Reed walked up to the end of the sidewalk to watch for the bus.

Wet and freezing, she was just about to give up and turn back when she saw the huge gray-white shape of a bus, hazy through the sleet, making its way slowly up the highway toward campus. The bus from Baracca?

She’d wait and see. If it wasn’t the right one, if it didn’t turn in at campus, if a tall, thin, blonde girl in a purple raincoat didn’t get off, she was going back to her room and go to bed, and Karen Overmeyer would just have to call her in the morning.

The bus did turn in at the entrance to campus, just as the sleet turned to a pelting sheet of heavy rain. Reed could see nothing more than its headlights, higher than the headlights of a car would have been.

It stopped just beyond the entrance, a good distance away from Reed. She’d never be able to see who got off from this far away. But Karen would head for the library. If Reed stayed where she was, they’d meet.

The rain, slanting sideways, acted as a screen, making it impossible for Reed to see clearly.

But she could make out two, or was it three, figures climbing down off the bus.

They hurried across the road to the sidewalk … a man, carrying a briefcase; a tall, broad student, judging by the bulge of a backpack on his shoulders.

Only two passengers.

Neither of them was a girl.

The two had already disappeared inside one of the campus buildings when the bus door swung open again and a third passenger stepped down.

Reed peered through the sheet of rain. A girl? Tall, thin, couldn’t see the hair, it was covered by some kind of rain hat. But it had to be Karen Overmeyer.

The third figure was exactly halfway between the bus and the sidewalk when headlights suddenly came out of nowhere, appearing behind her, spotlighting her through the rain and the darkness.

The girl looked up, startled by the sudden onslaught of light.

The headlights began moving … fast … faster … racing toward her.

Reed opened her mouth to scream even as she realized that it wouldn’t do any good. She was too far away. The engine of the idling bus and the torrential rain slapping against the sidewalk were too loud.

She screamed. The sound disappeared into the night.

Perhaps the girl screamed, too. Reed would never know.

She watched helplessly as the girl turned clumsily, slipping on the ice. It was hopeless. She couldn’t escape. No time to jump out of the way, no time to throw herself out of the path of the onrushing car.

Reed was too far away to hear the sickening thunk as the body of steel collided with flesh, but she imagined it, and a soft moan of horror escaped from between her lips.

The purple raincoat flew up into the air, somersaulted, and landed … softly, it seemed to Reed … on the cold, wet grass marching along beside the sidewalk, and lay, deathly still, in the merciless rain.

T
HE CAR BRAKED, ROARED
backward, then spun around, and was gone.

Slipping and skidding on the slick sidewalk, Reed ran as fast as she could to the limp, still figure lying on the sodden grass. The bus driver remained in the bus, the door closed, but she could see him, standing near the wheel, talking into something … a mouthpiece? Calling an ambulance?

She hoped so. She fell to her knees by the motionless girl.

Everything after that was surreal, as if in slow motion. The bus driver ran over to where Reed knelt beside Karen. He took off his jacket and laid it over her. The ambulance arrived, its wailing siren bringing a curious crowd to the scene in spite of the rain. The attendants asked Reed the girl’s name, and she told them she thought it was Karen Overmeyer, that she had a sister on campus. They asked her to go tell the sister, send her to the Twin Falls hospital. They couldn’t wait for her.

Reed didn’t know where Lindsey Overmeyer lived. A dorm? Sorority house?

She couldn’t remember who Lindsey’s friends were. Milo … Milo Keith, at Nightingale Hall … he knew her, didn’t he?

She ran into Lester and used the phone in the lobby. Milo had been asleep, but he woke up quickly when she gasped out what had happened.

“Devereaux,” he said quickly, “Lindsey lives at Devereaux. Do you want me to call her?”

“Later,” Reed said. “But I should tell her something like this in person.”

She slammed down the phone and ran back out into the night.

I don’t want to do this, she thought miserably as her eyes raced across the page of the student directory in Devereaux’s lobby. Overmeyer, Lindsey, room 566. Fifth floor.

She flicked her I.D. card at the girl behind the desk and scribbled her name on the sign-in sheet.

Then she ran to the elevator. So slow … hurry, don’t hurry, I don’t want to have to tell Lindsey that her sister has been hit by a car and might be dying … dead … dying … I don’t
want
to.

But she did. And was forced to stand there in the doorway and watch as Lindsey’s face collapsed, listen as Lindsey cried out, “Oh, no, no! I
knew
something like this was going to happen, I knew it!”

Lindsey drove to the hospital. Reed went, too, because it seemed wrong not to. She didn’t know Karen, but she was the reason Karen had been on that bus. And by the time they reached the hospital in town, she knew at least part of the reason for the trip. Lindsey, her hands gripping the steering wheel so tightly her arms shook, talked all the way there. Her words spilled out of her rapid-fire, in spite of her tears.

“She loved her job at first,” she said, straining to see through the sheen of rain on her windshield. “Always liked McCoy’s books, a real fan, Karen was. I saw that house once, went with her to work, just to see what kind of house a famous author would live in. Hated it. Couldn’t believe Karen was going there every day. So creepy, so depressing. Karen wasn’t the happiest person in the world to begin with … moody, sometimes depressed … I didn’t think working there was good for her.”

Quiet tears slid down her cheeks as she talked. “After the first week or so, Karen got real edgy. Jumped at the tiniest sound. Lost her appetite. I asked her what was wrong, and she kept saying nothing. I knew it was that job. Tried to talk her into quitting. But she was so fascinated with McCoy. Wanted to know more about what she called ‘the writer’s mind.’ ”

Like me, Reed thought. I’ve thought about quitting, too, but
something keeps me there.

“Even when she found out that McCoy had been at Brooklawn, she still refused to quit. It scared me, but Karen said McCoy just had a very sensitive mind.”

Reed frowned. A sensitive mind? “She had the flu or something … exhaustion, Rain said.”

Lindsey glanced sideways. “Reed, Brooklawn is a psychiatric facility. McCoy had a nervous breakdown. Didn’t you know?”

Reed sank back against the seat. Nervous breakdown? Why hadn’t she guessed? All of the clues were there, and how many medical hospitals had a name like Brooklawn? That was a name given to places where you went for a peaceful, restful recovery. And sometimes you stayed a long time.

Ignoring Reed’s obvious shock, Lindsey said bitterly, “You know how I found out that McCoy had accused my sister of stealing? Karen had a nightmare. She came and stayed overnight in my room one night. She said she just felt like it, but she was pale and shaky. I knew she was really there because she was afraid to sleep alone. And then she had this terrible dream … I woke up because she was shouting, ‘I didn’t take it, I swear I didn’t take it! I didn’t take anything!’

“I woke her up and made her tell me the truth. She said McCoy was missing some things and she’d accused Karen of taking them.

“My sister would never steal anything. She doesn’t even like to borrow from people. I asked her what she thought had happened to the stuff that was missing, and she clammed up. She
knew
something, I was sure of it. As for me, I knew the woman was deliberately lying about Karen, but I couldn’t figure out why. And then someone told me that she was nutty as a fruitcake, so I figured that was it.”

The rumors. The rumors that Rain and his mother ignored. But other people didn’t ignore them.

Lindsey blinked as the headlights of a truck going in the other direction slapped her in the face. “Karen said she’d been accused of snooping, too. Well, that was just ridiculous. She’s the most private person I know, and she respects other people’s privacy, too. She wouldn’t do anything like that.”

Reed flushed. Karen Overmeyer was nicer than she was.

“I asked her why she didn’t quit, and she surprised me. She said, very quietly, ‘I’ll quit when I get ready to quit, and not a minute before.’ Well, I wanted her to leave that house, but I was kind of proud of her, too, know what I mean? She wasn’t usually so assertive.”

“But she did quit,” Reed said quietly. “And quit school, too.”

Lindsey nodded as she pulled into the hospital’s parking lot. “I know. They
scared
her out of that job. Scared her away from here. It must have taken a lot of courage for her to come back here tonight. And look where it got her!”

“They? Who are they?”

“I don’t know.” Lindsey turned off the ignition. “Someone. She started getting phone calls, even when she was in my room. She’d answer, and she’d look like someone had just punched her in the stomach, and then she’d slam the phone down. I think she was being threatened. I’d never seen her so scared. I tried to get her to talk about it, but I think she thought that would put me in danger, too. She wouldn’t go to the police, either. The next thing I knew, she was leaving campus. I couldn’t talk her out of it. She was too scared. She never told me why.”

They got out of the car. “She was going to tell
me,”
Reed said. “I’m sure that’s why she came all the way here tonight. She was going to tell me what scared her.” And if I’d answered her phone calls, she thought guiltily, she wouldn’t have made that trip tonight, and she wouldn’t have been hit by a car when she got off the bus.

No … that wasn’t true. Whoever had hit Karen had been lying in wait for her, had known that she was coming to campus, and had been determined to kill her. If it hadn’t happened tonight, on campus, it would have happened somewhere else, some other time.
Someone
wanted her dead.

But she
wasn’t
dead. She was in serious condition, they were told when they went inside. Broken leg, skull fracture, facial abrasions and contusions, but she would probably be all right.

Lindsey sobbed quietly with relief.

Two police officers arrived to ask questions. Reed felt useless. She hadn’t even really seen the car, only the headlights.

They were disappointed, but they didn’t seem to blame her. They were kind enough to blame it on the weather.

When they had gone, and the Overmeyer parents had been notified, Lindsey asked to see her sister. She was told that wouldn’t be possible until at least the next day. Lindsey refused to leave. Reed talked her into going to the hospital cafeteria for coffee. They could talk there. She had so many questions …

“Who knew Karen was coming here tonight?” she asked when they were seated.

“I
didn’t even know she was coming,” Lindsey answered. She picked up her coffee cup, but didn’t drink. She fixed her eyes on Reed.
“You
were the only one who knew.”

“Well, I certainly didn’t run her down!” Reed said hotly, stung. “I was right there … I saw the whole thing.” She shuddered. “I
saw
it.”

“I didn’t mean you’d done it. I just meant, since you were the only person who knew she was coming, maybe you’d told someone. Not knowing you shouldn’t,” Lindsey added hastily.

“But I didn’t! I didn’t tell anyone. I got home and there was a message from her …”

“Who took the message?”

“Tisha. My roommate. Tisha Blackwell.”

Lindsey put down her coffee cup. “Well, maybe your roommate, Tisha Blackwell, knows someone who knows someone who hates my sister, and Tisha happened to mention that Karen was coming to campus tonight on the bus from Baracca.”

Reed didn’t want Tisha to know someone who knew someone who would run someone down with a car and leave them for dead.