Book of Horrors (Nightmare Hall) (6 page)

Reed had to gently prod her into collecting the fan mail so the work could get started.

“I’ll be in my office,” Victoria McCoy said when Reed had everything she needed. She pointed. “Back there, behind the kitchen.

“I’m not to be disturbed,” the author added as she turned to leave. She gestured toward the headphones hanging around her neck. “I work to organ music from the old classic horror movies. Puts me in the mood. The headphones keep out distracting sounds. This old house is so full of them. There is wood there beside the fireplace if you’d like to keep the fire going, and help yourself to anything in the kitchen. I’m afraid the telephone isn’t working again. It does that whenever there’s a snowfall, but I don’t mind. It’s a nuisance, anyway.” Then she added anxiously, “You won’t be needing to make any calls, will you? You can go home at four o’clock. That’s not so long to go without a telephone, is it?”

“No, it’s okay.” But how did people function without a working telephone? That would be worse than having no television, Reed thought, suddenly realizing that she hadn’t seen one of those around, either. Only an old stereo on one of the bookshelves.

The bronze raven on the top shelf glared down at her. She turned away quickly.

The room seemed even darker and grimmer than Reed remembered it, and the fire in the fireplace did nothing to dispel the sweet-sour smell of mildew. The dampness tugged at her bones, struggling to slip inside, and the house creaked and groaned.

Perfect, Reed told herself. It’s
supposed
to be like this. But she didn’t think it as enthusiastically as she had on Thursday.

Poe’s cage was covered, so the shrieking that Reed had dreaded didn’t occur. Napping. Good. She hoped he napped at this time every day. She didn’t think she could stand the sight of him, even though she knew he hadn’t meant to attack her.

She finished the fan mail in short order, her fingers flying over the typewriter keys. When she had the letters addressed and waiting for McCoy’s signature, she sat back in the old swivel chair and glanced around aimlessly. What to do next? McCoy hadn’t given her any other tasks, and she had made it very clear that Reed was not to disturb her.

She reread some of the fan letters she had answered. It was interesting how some readers liked McCoy because she was “scary” and others chided her for not being scary enough.

Can’t please everybody, Reed thought, and let her fingers roam about the desk surface, playing with a paper clip, a pen cap, snapping rubber bands across the room.

Glancing at her watch, she saw that it was only three-thirty. Half an hour left: What to do with it?

What was McCoy working on now? It would be exciting to see the new manuscript in rough form, while the author was actually struggling with it. Did McCoy still struggle? Or was it easy for her now, after so many?

Maybe she sometimes worked at this desk. There could be notes jotted down in the drawers, hinting at what she was working on now.

You can’t go through someone else’s desk, Reed’s conscience scolded. It’s private property. And if you got caught, you’d be fired, that’s for sure. On your first day!

True.

Still, it was sort of her desk now, wasn’t it? And there were all those drawers. Six of them. Probably filled with valuable information about what made a real author tick. Could be an education all by itself, peeking into those drawers.

Maybe just one? One of the small ones? Unless they were locked.

They weren’t locked. The small drawer in the middle at the top slid quietly open.

Pencils, sharpened to a keen point. Pens, some with their caps missing. Small notepads, blank. More paper clips, more rubber bands.

Disappointed, Reed closed the drawer. Nothing educational about
that
drawer.

Listening for footsteps the whole time, she leaned to her right side and slid a large bottom drawer open. It was crammed full of notebooks, the spiral kind with brightly colored covers. The top one bore a white, rectangular label. The handwriting on it was in ballpoint ink.

“Cat’s Play,”
the label declared in large black letters.

Reed couldn’t believe it. Was she really looking at a rough draft, maybe even the very
first
draft, of the famous novel? Was this how McCoy began every book? Writing in longhand in an ordinary spiral notebook? Was Reed Monroe actually looking at literary history in the making?

She had to see for herself.

Breathing hard, her ears straining for any sound that would tell her the author had left her office, Reed bent over and lifted the notebook from the drawer. She opened the cover.

“Cat’s Play, Chapter One, Page One,”
was scrawled in longhand across the top of the first page. “First draft.”

Reed let out a long, happy sigh. She was actually holding in her hands the raw beginning of what had become a very famous novel, one that she had held more than once after it was finished and bound between hard covers. Who would ever have thought that she would one day be sitting where she was sitting now, holding what she was holding now? It was so incredible, she could hardly believe it.

She closed her eyes and hugged the notebook to her chest.

She was so lost in bliss that she failed to hear an office door open and close.

Nor did she hear footsteps, as soft black felt slippers moved down the hall. She didn’t even hear the sharp intake of breath as Victoria McCoy entered the room.

The first thing Reed was aware of was a voice shouting at her angrily, “What on
earth
do you think you’re doing?”

A
T THE SOUND OF
Victoria McCoy’s voice, Reed gasped and the manuscript fell to the desk as if the bones in her fingers had suddenly disintegrated. She jumped up out of the chair, her face paper-white. “I … I was just looking for a pencil,” she breathed, as if there weren’t half a dozen of them sitting in a small can on the desk. “I … I didn’t …”

The author moved slowly toward the desk. “You were … were snooping?” she asked, her voice hushed. “You were searching through my things, like some thief off the streets?”

Tears of humiliation stung Reed’s eyelids. Then her back stiffened. She shouldn’t have gone into someone else’s desk drawers, but McCoy was acting as if she’d
murdered
someone. “I’m sorry. I really am. But they weren’t locked,” she said defensively.

“No, they aren’t locked. Because I don’t expect my assistants to go rummaging through my drawers.” McCoy sighed heavily and she extended her hands in front of her helplessly. “I really must have my privacy,” she said sadly. “I really must.”

Reed could think of nothing to say. She had apologized. Wasn’t that enough?

“You were searching for my new work, weren’t you?” the author said in that same, sad voice. “You want to find it and steal it, sell it to the highest bidder, don’t you?”

“No!”

“Well, do you think I’d leave it lying around in an unlocked drawer? Do you think I’m … crazy?”

Poe awoke then and began shrieking, “Mad as a hatter, mad as a hatter!”

Reed shuddered with revulsion. She picked up her shoulder bag and her ski jacket. “I’ll be going now,” she said quietly. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have gone into your desk.”

The woman’s eyes moved away from Reed, centering on a spot just above Reed’s head as she said softly, almost in a whisper, “You’re just like all the rest, after all.”

Reed stared at her. “What?”

“Betraying me like this,” the author whispered, still staring at the wall. “Such betrayal …”

“I’m sorry,” Reed repeated. “Good-bye.” Shoulders back, head high, she strode to the door and was about to yank it open when from behind her, McCoy’s voice said calmly, pleasantly, “Ms. Monroe? Are you leaving? Have you finished for the day?”

Reed turned around.

Victoria McCoy lifted the pendant watch hanging on a gold chain around her neck and said, “My goodness! It
is
four o’clock. I had no idea!” She dropped the watch and smiled at Reed. For that one moment, she looked very like the picture on the back of her books. “Time just whizzes by when I’m in the middle of a chapter. Of course you must go. Before it gets dark. What time do you think you might get here tomorrow?”

Stunned, Reed had a hard time finding her voice. It was as if the horrible incident between them had never taken place. The expression on Victoria McCoy’s face was bland and pleasant. “Do you have an important exam or something equally pressing? Because of course, if you do, the work could wait until Wednesday.”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Reed said slowly. “I’ll be here tomorrow. About the same time.” She wasn’t sure how her neck had been saved, but it had. She hadn’t been fired on the first day, after all.

“Fine. That’s just fine. See you then, Ms. Monroe. May I call you Reed?”

“Yes. Yes, sure.” Reed pulled the door open slowly and stepped outside, feeling totally disoriented.

When the door had closed behind her, Reed stood on the front step for a moment, trying to shake the feeling of disorientation. Had she dreamed the whole thing? Was it possible she’d fallen asleep in the swivel chair, dozed off, just for a few minutes, and had a nightmare? Because that’s what it had been. McCoy catching her in the act, becoming so enraged, shouting at her like that, muttering about betrayal. A nightmare!

But had it really happened? How could someone be so furious one minute and then, in the next, act as if everything was perfectly normal?”

Reed shook her head, trying to clear it. Maybe it
hadn’t
really happened.

“You leaving?” a voice said from beside her.

Reed jumped. Rain moved around in front of her. “Leaving already? I was hoping I’d get here before you were done for the day. How’d it go?” There was a note of anxiety in his voice that surprised Reed. Had he been worried about how she and his mother would get along? Or was he just worried about his mother? Maybe with good reason.

“Fine,” she said automatically. “It went fine. Except …” She stopped. What was she going to say? I went snooping through your mother’s desk drawers and she went off on me like a bomb? Not a good idea.

“Think you might like to take in a movie with me Saturday night?” he asked suddenly. “A French film, at the art house in town.” He smiled. “You were expecting maybe an Alfred Hitchcock thriller? I prefer French films. Do you like them?”

She loved French films. Link wouldn’t be caught dead at one. But she was supposed to go to a party at Nightingale Hall, an off-campus dorm, on Saturday night. Link was probably expecting her to go with him, although he hadn’t asked. Taking it for granted, probably. He’d be mad if she cancelled.

She
could
invite Rain to join them. He and Milo Keith, one of the dorm’s residents, would probably get along well. They were both readers, both a little bit offbeat.

Or she could skip the party and go to the movie with Rain instead. But she was anxious to see the inside of the big, old brick house sitting high up on a hill off the highway. Everyone called it “Nightmare Hall” because a student had died there last spring.

Suicide, they said.

This might be her only chance to get inside. Although it was hard to believe right now that Nightingale Hall could be that much creepier than the McCoy house.

“Actually, I’m supposed to go to a party. Would you like to come?” Reed told Rain about the party, thinking, Link will be livid. But she wasn’t inviting Rain as a
date.
Just inviting him to a party. No reason for Link to be jealous. Not that he needed a reason.

“Great!” Rain said. “Eight on Saturday night? I’ll be there.”

If the party wasn’t any fun, Reed thought, they could always talk books.

“You started to tell me something before,” he reminded her. “What was it? Something about my mother?”

“Never mind. It wasn’t important.”

His eyes, black as night, glittered. He didn’t believe her. “Listen,” he said as she turned to leave, “I should have told you this earlier, before you started working for McCoy. There’s one thing …”

“What?”

“Well, it’s just that she’s very protective of her works-in-progress. Treats any new work like a lioness with a cub.
No one,
and I
mean
no one, gets a peek at it before it goes sailing off to her publisher. So, if you should be curious, my advice would be, swallow your urge to go hunting. If she catches you snooping, you’re dead.”

Reed felt her cheeks redden. How did he
know”?
“Is that what her other assistants did?” she asked boldly. “She … she happened to mention something about ‘betrayal.’ Was that what she meant, that they saw something she was working on?”

He turned away then to pick up a load of firewood. “I don’t know. She never told me why they left. She’s a very private person, my mother.”

No kidding. “Yeah, I know. See you tomorrow.”

Reed hurried away, afraid that if she stayed any longer, she’d tell him what had happened. McCoy hadn’t exactly thrown a tantrum. Wasn’t that one of the rumors about McCoy? That her assistants quit because she had a temper? But she’d hardly raised her voice. And then her anger had disappeared so suddenly …

Weird.

Reed wondered if what she had seen was part of Victoria McCoy’s dark side. What was it that brought it out? A desperate need for privacy? Or paranoia about having her work stolen? Had Victoria McCoy always been that way about her work? Or was her behavior today the result of her illness?

Maybe she would ask Rain about that Saturday night. After they’d become better friends. It was important to know the
why
of such strange behavior. Wasn’t that why she’d taken the job in the first place? To learn?

Link and Jude and Debrah were waiting in the trees at the edge of the path.

“Did you show her the manuscripts I gave you?” Jude asked immediately.

“Jude, it was my first
day!
I’m not going to bother her with that until I know her better.” If I ever
do,
Reed thought dubiously.

Jude was clearly miffed. “Bother? You’re doing her a favor, showing her my work. She’ll be grateful, Reed.”

“Where’s Lilith?” Reed asked as they began to move along the path toward campus.