Dark Moon (Nightmare Hall) (7 page)

Before the police officers had digested this new information, Garth returned, a first-aid kit in hand. He marched straight over to Eve and ordered her to sit down in a chair, “while I take a look at that foot. I’ve had some first-aid training. If I can’t patch you up, you’re going to the infirmary.”

He hadn’t abandoned her, after all. He was, in fact, the only person who had been concerned about her injuries.

When the foot had been bandaged and Garth had daubed antiseptic on the cut behind her ear, the two campus police officers led all of them back to the Mirror Maze.

Everyone but Eve seemed stunned by the destruction.

“You were in the middle of all this?” Alfred said in awe, staring at Eve. Garth’s mouth was grim, Serena had tears of disbelief in her eyes, and Andie’s face was white with shock. “I can’t believe you weren’t sliced to ribbons,” she whispered to Eve.

Eve answered all of the questions directed at her in an amazingly calm voice, until one policeman asked her if she knew anyone who was angry with her.

That stumped her. Could someone be so angry with her that they’d chase her down a corridor, smashing mirrors in her face, taunting her the whole way? What could she have done to make someone so mad?

She couldn’t think of anything.

She shook her head. “No. I don’t think so.”

“Well, if anything else happens, let us know,” the younger police officer said.

Eve stared at him in dismay. “Anything else?” she said, her voice cracking slightly. “You think something else might happen?”

He shrugged. “This looks like serious business to me,” he said. “Like your friend said, you could have been seriously injured. And you said he knew your name. Might be a good idea to stay close to your dorm room for a while, until we get to the bottom of this.”

“I’m cochair of this event,” she said, trying to keep her voice level. “The other chairperson is already in the infirmary. That leaves me. I can’t run things from my dorm room.” Why didn’t they just
catch
whoever had done this? Wasn’t that their job?

“We’ll keep an eye on her,” Garth told the police officer. “You just find out who did this, okay? Then she won’t have to worry.”

Leaving the officers there to search the scene thoroughly, Eve led the way out of the maze. It wasn’t difficult, thanks to her lipstick and marker trail. But she made very sure that the group stayed close together until they reached the exit.

The skies had opened up while they were inside. It was pouring thick sheets of rain that were rapidly turning the earth to mud and sending people running for the exits in droves.

“Of course,” Eve said wearily as they clustered under the building’s overhang, “of course it’s raining. Why wouldn’t it be?” And wondered why she hadn’t let Alfred or Serena or Andie or one of the townspeople run this stupid event.

If someone was so furious with her that they wanted to hurt her, then she needed to be tougher and stronger. Like her mother.

The trouble was, she didn’t know if she had it in her.

Eve stood up straighter, took a deep breath. She wasn’t going to fold, not yet. She had faked being organized and responsible, hadn’t she? Maybe she could fake the rest. She’d pretend she wasn’t scared half out of her wits, pretend that she was as much in control as she’d always seemed to be, pretend that she hadn’t realized the maniac in the maze knew exactly who she was and was out to get her.

Maybe she’d do such a good job, she’d even fool
herself
into thinking she wasn’t scared half to death.

It was worth a try.

Besides, rain or no rain, she still had the carnival to think about. People were counting on her.

“This place is going to be a mess tomorrow,” Serena commented grimly as they all stood in a group, watching the sheets of rain.

Eve laughed bitterly. “Could it be any worse than it was today?” she cried. “I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m starving, and I don’t want any of the junk food here. I say we all head for Vinnie’s and forget about this stupid carnival for a little while.”

“Are you sure?” Garth asked, gazing down into her rain-streaked face. “You don’t want to head for the dorm? That ankle must be hurting.”

“No! My room is boring!” Eve cried giddily. “Come on, let’s go! Vinnie’s isn’t that far. And a little rain never killed anyone.” Unlike a million pieces of flying, broken glass, she thought instantly.

When they were settled in Garth’s car, daubing at wet faces with crumpled tissues yanked from pockets, Eve, sitting in the front between Garth and Alfred, leaned her head against the seat and wondered who could be so angry with her, they wanted her to die.

At Vinnie’s, crowded because of the rain, she knew she was talking and laughing too loudly. She felt the stares of Serena and Alfred and Andie as she chattered away, her words spilling out of her in a rush in her effort to pretend she wasn’t scared. She couldn’t help it. If she kept talking and laughing and pretending that everything was okay, maybe everything would
seem
okay.

Garth didn’t know her well enough to realize she was behaving oddly. Still, when they’d talked earlier, at the carnival, she must have struck him as a quieter person, because she felt his eyes on her once or twice and, when she looked up, she saw the concern in them.

He knew something was wrong.

That wasn’t what Eve wanted. She wanted everyone to think there was
nothing
wrong. That she wasn’t scared. That she had passed off the maze incident with barely a shudder. That she wasn’t still thinking about it.

She calmed down then, deciding that a better approach would be to act as she always did. Calm, with no outward hint that she was terrified. Composed, as if she knew exactly what she was doing and how to do it. That shouldn’t be hard. Hadn’t she been doing it all of her life? What was so different about this time?

Are you kidding? the answer came readily. The difference, Eve Forsythe, is that you’re not just running a social event this time. You
thought
that’s what you were doing. But you were wrong.
Dead
wrong. This time, you’re running for your
life.

Serena and Alfred lived off-campus, at Nightingale Hall, an old, brick building with a sagging front porch. Surrounded by huge, old, dark-limbed oak trees that kept the house shadowed even on sunny days, Nightingale Hall sat high on a hill overlooking the highway. Nicknamed Nightmare Hall by the students, partly because of its gloomy appearance but mostly because of stories about strange happenings there, it seemed to Eve to sink deeper and deeper into its surroundings with every passing day, as if one day she would drive by there and the house would have disappeared from sight completely, with only the top of its brick chimney poking up over the crest of the hill.

She didn’t see how anyone could live there. But when Garth dropped them off that night, Serena and Alfred jumped from the car and ran up the driveway like anyone else going back to the place where they lived.

It had stopped raining by the time they returned to campus. The sky was cloudless, the moon, almost full now, shining down upon them. The air smelled clean and fresh and the ground didn’t seem to be oozing mud the way Eve had feared. Maybe the carnival grounds would be dry when the site opened the next afternoon.

She would have to remember to put an OUT OF ORDER sign on the Mirror Maze first thing tomorrow.

Exhausted, she showered, rebandaged her ankle, and went to bed. She was asleep almost immediately.

Meanwhile, a figure stood motionless behind the darkened Ferris wheel.

The figure’s arms were outstretched and raised toward the sky. Its eyes were closed, its face upturned, as if it were basking in the silvery glow of the moon.

I
COULD HAVE KILLED
Eve tonight. She ran too fast, though. Besides, it was fun scaring her, chasing her, smashing those mirrors while she ran. So I made up my mind not to kill her just yet. But then I was disappointed when she got out, because I was having so much fun. She’s smart, Eve is. That was clever, the bit with the lipstick and the marker.

But she’s not clever enough to figure out that I get my power from you, Moon. She’d never believe it. She’d laugh. Make fun of me. I can just hear her. “Oh, get real,” she’d say, in that scornful way she has. When I didn’t back down, she’d add, “Special power? You and the moon? And what planet did you say you were from?” Eve doesn’t believe in anything that she can’t see right in front of her eyes. And she doesn’t want anyone else to believe, either. Of all the people in parapsychology class who don’t belong there, she’s the worst. The most logical, the most cynical, the most scornful.

Never mind. She’ll learn. I saw the look on her face tonight. She’s pretending not to be scared, but it’s not working. I could see the fear in her eyes. Maybe no one else could, but it was there. That fear is there because what happened to her doesn’t make any sense. Eve is terrified of anything that can’t be explained logically. That’s really why she’s afraid. Because she just doesn’t understand.

I wonder what she’ll think when she realizes, as she will soon enough, that she’s not the only target. Others made fun, too, and like her, they must be punished. Will she be relieved when someone else suffers instead of her? Or will she be even more terrified? I wonder. It’ll be fun finding out. Seeing what she’s really made of.

Time is crucial, right? I mean, you up there, you’re only at your fullest for a little while, which means I’m only at my best for a little while. No time to waste. My goal is to teach them that they shouldn’t overlook me. Someone as special as I am should not be ignored. They are also going to learn not to make fun of things they don’t understand.

They will either learn that, or they’ll die trying.

O
N MONDAY MORNING, THE
second thing Eve did after neatly making her bed was pull her hair away from her face and fasten it tightly with a barrette. Because Andie had said she looked “different” with it loose. She didn’t want to look different. Not now. She needed to look the same, act the same,
be
the same, if she was going to get through this week.

Eve’s first class on Mondays was parapsychology. Alfred was waiting for her in the doorway, as always, and took a seat beside her, opposite Serena, who was reading a magazine, and behind Andie, who was putting the finishing touches on her weekly letter to her father. She had left the room before Eve that morning so she could stop at the university post office and buy stamps.

Eve had enjoyed the walk alone. It was a beautiful morning. There wasn’t a cloud in the blue sky overhead and only a gentle breeze stirred the branches of the huge old trees lining the campus walkways. She hoped the sun was drying up the mud at the carnival site. The grounds didn’t open until two o’clock. That should be enough time.

The episode in the Mirror Maze seemed unreal in the bright morning sunshine. If it hadn’t been for the bandage on her ankle, Eve would have been convinced that she’d imagined the whole thing.

If the police had discovered anything important in their search of the maze, they would have called her. They hadn’t. So she still didn’t have a single clue to the identity of the glass-smasher who had called her by name.

She groaned inwardly when she walked down the hall and saw Alfred standing in the doorway. Why didn’t he just give up? She had given no sign, ever, that she was interested in him as anything more than a friend, yet he continued to hover over her like a lovesick bird. He called often, sent her little notes, bought candy bars for her at the bookstore and brought them to class, usually handing them to her in front of everyone so they could see his devotion.

“Well,
I
think he’s cute,” Andie had said when Eve complained. “If you don’t want him, I’ll take him.”

Cute? Alfred? Never. All of his features were in the right place, but he was too stiff, too polished, for “cute.” He was like a brand-new Ken doll. And Eve Forsythe was no Barbie.

“Dr. Litton,” Andie asked as class began, “why do I always have weird dreams when the moon is full?”

Snickers of derision rippled around the room.

But the professor, a tall, attractive woman with graying hair worn in a long, thick French braid, nodded. “I’ve heard that before.” She glanced around the room. “How many of you believe that the phases of the moon affect us in one way or another?”

About half the class raised a hand. Three of the hands belonged to Alfred, Andie, and Serena. If Kevin had been there instead of in the infirmary, Eve felt sure his hand would have been up, too.

Her own hands stayed on her desk. It wasn’t logical to believe that the moon could make people dream, or make them do anything else. She’d seen the werewolf movies, read the books. She thought it was all very silly. Men didn’t turn into wolves under a full moon or any kind of moon, and no one fell in love because of a round, silver ball up in the sky. She had never believed for a moment that the moon was anything but the earth’s satellite.

And she didn’t have weird dreams when the moon was full.

Other people did, it turned out, and they all began describing them while Dr. Litton listened attentively.

Those who thought it was all nonsense said so, including Eve, and the discussion became very lively.

It was still going on when class was dismissed.

“Hey, Andie,” a tall, husky, blond boy teased as they all left their desks, “the man in the moon is coming to get you tonight. Better watch out!”

Andie flushed and retorted, “You’re the one who’d better watch out, Boomer. A closed mind is a dying mind. If a fresh, new thought ever forced its way into that dried-up, shrunken little brain of yours, your entire body would go into shock.”

“The moon affects the tides,” Serena said to no one in particular. “How do we know it doesn’t affect us, too?”

They were still arguing when Eve spotted a tall, dark-haired figure lounging against the wall opposite the open classroom door. Garth.

Eve picked up her books and left with the rest of the class. Not sure that Garth actually was waiting for her, she intended to simply give him a casual wave as she walked by. But he joined her before she had a chance to wave, erasing any uncertainty.