Captives (Nightmare Hall) (3 page)

“I’m with Lynne,” Molloy said. “I am soaked to the bone, I’m cold, my legs feel like rubber from all this climbing, and I can’t face that creek again. Come on, girls, we are women, hear us roar. Whatever that is up there, we can deal with it, right?”

“Absolutely right,” Daisy said, turning to face the top of the hill.

“Well, I’m not going back down by myself,” Toni said grudgingly. “If you’re all going up, I’m coming, too. But could we please stay very close together, now that we don’t have any light at all?”

They had all turned toward the top of the hill and joined hands, when they heard a rumbling sound above them. It sounded a little like a large truck moving across the ground,

“What …?” Lynne began, but before she could finish the thought, the deep grumble became an ominous thundering, and the earth seemed to shake beneath their feet.

The boulder came at them from above, shooting out of the thick, dark underbrush like a cannonball, aiming straight at the group holding hands on the muddy, slippery slope.

T
HE HUGE BOULDER THUNDERED
down the hill toward them, spraying mud and leaves in its path. Too paralyzed with fear to move, the four girls, still clutching hands and stricken mute with shock, formed a petrified human chain directly in its path.

It was Molloy who screamed, “Move out of the way!”

The sound of her voice spurred them to action. Hands tore free of other hands, bodies flew to the left and to the right, voices cried out in pain as a leg slammed into a fallen log, an elbow cracked against a stone on the ground.

The boulder, which Daisy would describe later with her usual hyperbole as being “the size of a small house,” thundered on down the hill, past them, landing, finally, in the creek far below them with a splash that resounded through the woods.

Molloy, weak with relief, lay sprawled on the spongy ground, her head against the rough bark of a fallen tree. She could already feel a lump beginning to rise on the back of her skull. But a lump was nothing in comparison to being squashed flatter than a pancake by a giant rock,

Lynne, holding her left elbow, was lying right beside Molloy. Her face was twisted in pain. “I think it might be broken,” she told Molloy.

Molloy helped her up and checked the elbow, as Daisy and Toni, brushing wet dirt and leaves from their clothing, joined them. Toni was holding the flashlight. It was dim, but it was on. Toni was shaking so violently, it swung back and forth like a lantern sending a signal in Morse code. The left side of her face was an angry red. “Rock,” she whispered. “Hurts.”

Lynne’s elbow wasn’t broken, after all. She could move the arm back and forth, and when she spotted the baseball bat lying on the ground, she bent to scoop it up, gripping it firmly around the neck, proving that the arm was no more than bruised. She had decided in the car to bring the bat along for protection.

Daisy was intact, although she was thoroughly soaked and covered in mud. “Of course I landed right in the middle of one of those torrents of water gushing down the hill,” she said shakily. “But I figure that’s better than landing underneath that boulder, right?” Her thin, heart-shaped face, yellow in the flashlight’s glow, looked bleak,

“The ground must have given way up there,” Lynne said, picking wet leaves from her jeans. “Like during those mudslides in California. If Molloy hadn’t screamed, we’d all be leaf mold now.”

“How do we know there aren’t more boulders up there?” Toni asked, her eyes nervously scanning the top of the hill. “I told you we should have gone back down to the car.”

“Oh, right.” Daisy bent, twig in hand, to scrape a thick layer of mud from her sneakers. “That way, we just would have been mowed down from behind. When they put us in our coffins, we’d have these weird expressions of total surprise on our faces, as if we were saying, ‘Whoa! What was
that?’”

“Daisy, stop talking about coffins,” Lynne commanded. “Nobody died. Nobody’s even hurt. And what are the odds that a second boulder is going to break loose of its moorings and come charging down the hill toward us? Probably nonexistent.” Rain dripped from her hair, her eyebrows, her nose, and her chin. Her pink cotton T-shirt was plastered to her body like a second skin. “Come on! It’s not that much farther.”

“See? What did I tell you?” Lynne cried triumphantly as they came over the rise and found themselves in a clearing occupied by three buildings. There were no lights in any of the windows, but their eyes had become accustomed to the darkness. With the help of the flashlight, they could see on the left side of the clearing a square, squat barn or shed, and on the right, a two-story garage with a set of narrow outside steps leading upward to a door. In the center of the clearing at the top of the hill stood a huge, four-story, old brick building with a small enclosed back porch and a metal fire escape clinging to a side wall. The brick looked almost black, and was nearly invisible in the darkness. The branches of huge, ancient oak trees rose like giant umbrellas over the house, as if they were intent on protecting it.

There were other boulders circling the lawn, all smaller than the one that had attacked them, but there was no sign that any of them were precariously perched.

“You said you saw a light up here,” Toni told Lynne accusingly. “I don’t see any lights. The place looks deserted. Gives me the creeps.”

“Are you kidding?” Daisy cried, moving quickly toward the back of the house. “Ever hear the expression, beggars can’t be choosers? It’s shelter, isn’t it? I wouldn’t care if it was Dracula’s castle, it’s got a roof and four walls and unless that roof leaks, it’s dry inside. Let’s go!”

“It’ll be locked,” Molloy said, but she hurried after Daisy. The rain was coming down hard again, pounding on her slicker as if it wanted to get in. Every step she took in her mud-encrusted flats was like sloshing through the creek all over again. “But if we can get in, I can use the phone to call Ernie and he’ll come and get us. He’ll take us back to the car to get our stuff, and then to the dorm. The thought of a hot shower, warm towels, and dry clothing seems like heaven. Let’s just hope this back door isn’t locked.”

It was. Firmly. There was no screen door, but the wooden door, the upper half glass, the frame freshly painted white, was unyielding.

Lynne groaned in disappointment. Molloy shrugged as if to say, Well, of course it’s locked. Who would go away and leave their doors unlocked? Toni said from behind them, “I don’t see how we could just walk into someone’s house, anyway. Why don’t we go out front and see if there’s a main road out there that’s not flooded?”

“I am not,” Daisy said, moving away from them, “going
anywhere
until I dry off, is that clear?” She was back a moment later, a large rock in her right hand. Daisy gave the windowpane closest to the doorknob a sharp rap with the rock. The glass cracked evenly down the middle of the pane. Another tap, and the glass caved inward, tinkling gently as the broken pieces landed on the floor inside the house.

The hole Daisy had created in the door window was relatively free of jagged edges. She stuck her hand inside without hesitation. “There’s a chain, too,” she said when she had turned the latch. “That’ll be trickier, but I think I can get it.”

A moment later they were standing inside a long, narrow, dark kitchen, in a house so quiet, the sound of the rain attacking the windows seemed as loud as a dentist’s drill.

“It’s empty,” Lynne said almost in a whisper. “I can tell. It
smells
empty, like no one’s cooked any food in this kitchen for a while. And it
feels
empty. You know, like when you’re the last person riding on a bus late at night? That kind of empty.”

“We shouldn’t be in here,” Toni said, glancing around anxiously. “We’re breaking the law.”

“We’re cold and we’re wet and we’re lost,” Daisy replied, moving around the kitchen in search of a towel, “so the laws don’t apply to us right now. When I am wearing dry clothes, I will once again become the law-abiding, responsible citizen I have always been. Somebody find a light switch. I can’t see a thing. This is a kitchen; it has to have at least
one
towel.”

Using her flashlight, the beam dying again, Lynne found an oversized denim jacket hanging on a hook just inside the back door. She plucked it from the rack with glee, then turned to ask if anyone else wanted it.

Everyone was wet and cold. But Lynne looked worse than anyone else, in her thin, saturated T-shirt. “No,” they all said in a chorus, “you put it on.”

Lynne found a bedroom door just off the kitchen, handed Molloy the fading flashlight, and went inside. When she came back out a moment later, she was wearing the dry denim jacket over an ugly, print, cotton dress. “I found it hanging on the back of the door,” she said, laughing and holding the hem of the dress away from her sides, “Horrendous, isn’t it? But it was dry, and frankly, it feels wonderful.” On her feet, she wore equally ugly black felt slippers. “Anybody got a camera?” she joked. “We could do one of those ‘Don’t’ pictures for a fashion magazine.”

“Are there other clothes in there?” Daisy asked, heading for the door.

Although the bedroom closet and dresser drawers were stripped almost bare, everyone found something dry to wear. Molloy shed her dripping clothing, replacing it with a bulky, worn gray cardigan with two missing buttons, and a pair of gray pants so large she had to tie the cord from Daisy’s windbreaker hood around her waist to hold them up. Daisy unearthed a long-sleeved, wine velvet dress from a trunk at the foot of the bed. It was a good deal smaller than the clothes Molloy and Lynne had found, and smelled as if it had been in the trunk a very long time. Toni had to settle for a long-sleeved white shirt that hung to her knees.

Their most welcome discovery was a drawer stuffed full of old socks. Every sock had at least one hole in it, but they were warm and dry, and no one complained.

Thus attired, they left the bedroom, their spirits refreshed by the dry, if bizarre, clothing.

Lynne’s flashlight was dying again. Molloy used it anyway, to locate a light switch on the kitchen wall just inside the door to other rooms. She flicked it once, twice, three times. Nothing happened.

“Either the people who lived here have gone away for vacation and turned off the electricity before they left,” she announced, “or they’ve just gone to town but the storm has taken down some wires.” She frowned. “I hope they’re on vacation, because if the storm took out the electricity, it could have taken out the phone, too. And the phone is what we need the most.”

“Not me,” Daisy said, opening and closing drawers, “a towel is what I need the most. My hair’s dripping down the back of my neck. It’s going to get my chic new outfit all wet.” When she didn’t find a towel, she gave up on the cabinets and moved to the refrigerator. “I’m starved. I’ll bet there isn’t a single thing to eat in this place.”

She was right, the refrigerator was empty. Without electricity, the small bulb protruding from the back wall didn’t come on when Daisy opened the door, but she didn’t need light to realize there was nothing inside but a small, opened box of baking soda.

“It doesn’t matter,” Molloy told a crestfallen Daisy. “We’re not going to be here long enough to eat. I’ll call Ernie, and we’ll be out of here. He’ll feed us. But first, we have to find a phone.”

Using the flashlight to guide their way, Molloy and Lynne left Daisy and Toni in the kitchen while they went in search of a telephone.

“This place is ancient,” Lynne commented as they made their way along a narrow hall, its hardwood floor dotted with worn scatter rugs, “I love old houses, although I guess I’ve never been in one as dark and dreary as this one,” She peered into every room.

There was a gigantic dining room furnished with a long, oval antique table and twelve chairs, a sideboard adorned with a bowl of dusty artificial fruit, and a built-in hutch in one corner. The library was equally good-sized, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a fireplace. Heavy maroon draperies hung on the long, narrow windows. Equally heavy cloths draped over the larger pieces of furniture answered their earlier question. The people occupying the house hadn’t simply gone into town to buy eggs and milk and a newspaper.

Lynne was inspecting the living room, its furniture draped with more white cloths, when Molloy found a telephone, perched on a small table near the entrance to a steep, wooden staircase in the entry hall. She snatched it up gratefully.

She had automatically begun to dial Ernie’s number at the dorm when she realized with a sinking heart that there was no dial tone. The line was dead.

A loud groan of disappointment escaped her. Hearing the sound, Lynne moved to Molloy’s side. “Not the phone, too?”

Molloy nodded and reluctantly replaced the receiver. “I thought it would be so easy,” she said heavily. “I’d call Ernie, he’d come and get us, take us to the car to get our things, and in no time at all, we’d be sitting in dry clothes at one of the places Ernie told me about. Vinnie’s, for pizza, or Burgers, Etc., or maybe he’d even take us into town for Chinese.” She sent Lynne a defeated look. “What do we do now?”

“Well, first,” Lynne said briskly, “we should figure out where we are. How far from campus this place is. We can’t make a plan until we know that. I mean, if it’s not too far, we could walk there when the rain lets up.”

“
If
the rain lets up,” Molloy said, following Lynne back along the hallway toward the kitchen. “What if it doesn’t? I’m not keen on camping out here all night long. I agree with Toni. There’s something about this place that makes my skin crawl. And I
don’t
think it’s just the weather.”

Lynne strode on purposefully ahead of Molloy. “Oh, you two! It’s just an old house, that’s all.”

But a moment later, when they heard the noise, it was Lynne who whirled in fright, Lynne’s face that drained of all color. “What was that?” she cried.

Molloy stood perfectly still. “I don’t know. It came from up there.” She pointed upward. “From upstairs. Didn’t it?” she added uncertainly. She had been lost in thought, dreading the possibility of having to spend the night in this damp, dreary old place, and although the sound from above had penetrated her thoughts, she wasn’t sure what kind of sound it had been.