The Night Walker (Nightmare Hall) (15 page)

Quinn sat up, scuttled closer to the hole, thrust her head out, scratching one cheek on the ragged edge of a board, and crying out in pain.

The fire below her roared angrily.

When she had swallowed enough air to ease the pain in her chest, she opened her mouth to scream for help. The sound that came out was pitiful, a hoarse croak.

Tears of frustration joined the smoke-induced tears in Quinn’s eyes. Help was so far away. How could anyone asleep in Nightingale Hall hear that pathetic little sound she’d just made? Her vocal chords must have been affected by the smoke.

Exhausted, terrified, her legs scalded by the intense heat directly beneath her, Quinn sagged against the little broken door, tempted to give up. Help … she needed help … she couldn’t get out of this place alone.

Desperate, she raised her eyes heavenward.

And saw the pulley.

A small, metal pulley, attached to the front of the barn. There was a thick rope wound around it. The tip of the rope dangled loosely, temptingly, over Quinn’s head. She couldn’t tell how long the rope was. But what did it matter if it didn’t carry her all the way to the ground? It would at least get her out of this inferno.

At the same moment, a light went on upstairs in Nightingale Hall. Quinn knew no one had heard her cry for help. Had they heard the flames crackling?

Someone would be coming to help.

But she couldn’t wait. There wasn’t time.

She could probably squeeze her chest and arms through the jagged hole. But it wasn’t large enough for her whole body. It would do her no good to grab the rope with her hand if she couldn’t get the rest of her through the hole. She had to make the hole larger.

But there was no time …

She pulled her head backward, out of the hole. A lick of flame jumped up behind Quinn and caught a small pile of straw in its mouth, devouring it.

The hungry flame would be coming for her next.

With a hoarse, desperate roar, Quinn drew both legs backward and, using them as a battering ram, drove them straight into the wounded little door.

It fell open, dangling from its hinges like a broken-winged bird.

Instantly, Quinn jumped up, leaned out of the open space, one hand holding onto the wall for leverage, and stretched upward, straining until one hand touched the rough tip of the rope. Carefully, her fingers closed around it and pulled it toward her.

Another light went on in Nightingale Hall, then another. Over the roar of the flames, Quinn was vaguely aware of faint shouting. The shouting grew louder, came closer. Footsteps thudded down the slope in front of her. Startled cries and more shouting, near her now. A siren sounded faintly in the distance.

But as her hand closed around the rope, a crashing sound behind her brought her head around to look back into the barn. The rear half of the platform she was standing on had collapsed. There was only a dark hole where she had been sitting when Ivy came into the barn.

Ivy …

The siren sound moved closer … fire trucks, on their way to save her.

No time …

Clutching the end of the rope with both fists, Quinn took a deep breath, closed her eyes … and jumped.

Halfway down, she was brutally jerked to a standstill.

The rope was too short.

And flames were escaping from the building now, stabbing outward like snakes’ tongues, straining outward to sear her, to consume her rope, and send her crashing to the ground.

She hung there, swaying above the hard ground, her face and arms feeling the hot breath of the fire.

“Jump!” someone shouted from below her. “Jump! You have to jump!”

She looked down. Below her, a group of people stood in a circle. They were all looking up at her. And they were holding something in their hands. It was stretched out across the circle, so that instead of seeing hard, dark ground, she saw white, as if that circle of ground had been covered with snow.

A sheet? A blanket?

They were holding a sheet or a blanket. Holding it up high, every person in the circle holding onto the edges for dear life.

For
her
dear life.

“Let go!” someone shouted. “Let go! We’ll catch you!”

A hot stab of flame singed Quinn’s elbow.

“Let go of the rope! Now!”

She let go.

And dropped, dropped, the heat from the burning building making her as dizzy as the fall itself.

She landed in the blanket, bounced once as if on a trampoline, and then lay still.

The fire truck screeched up the driveway.

Someone ran to direct the fire fighters.

“Ivy,” Quinn said hoarsely as people helped her off the blanket. “Ivy Green is in there.”

And by the way someone replied, “In
there
?
”
Quinn knew there was no hope. Not for Ivy.

But then … maybe there hadn’t been any hope for Ivy in a long, long time.

While the fire fighters tackled the blaze, Quinn, the blanket wrapped around her shoulders, sat with Jess and Ian, wiping her face with a cool cloth Jess had brought her.

When the fire was out, when the fire truck had gone and the police had arrived, Quinn went inside Nightingale Hall to answer their questions. Jess and Ian stayed with her.

The first question the police officer asked her was, “May I ask you what you were doing in the barn, miss?”

Quinn, lying on a couch with the blanket over her, her cuts and bruises being tended to by Nightingale Hall’s housemother, Mrs. Coates, wanted to say, “Well, officer, I can tell you this. I
wasn’t
sleepwalking.”

But she didn’t. He wouldn’t understand.

Instead, she told him everything that had happened that night.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING.
Q
UINN,
her hands mittened in white gauze, lay in the narrow infirmary bed surrounded by her friends. Her head throbbed dully and her chest ached from smoke-tortured lungs, but for the first time in weeks, she felt completely, totally safe. Simon was sitting on the edge of her bed, holding one of her bandaged hands carefully in his, and Tobie and Suze stood on the opposite side.

She was safe.

But she still had questions.

“Suze,” she asked hoarsely, “why did you tell me you were getting Reed’s purse from the wrecked car? You weren’t.”

Suze’s face flamed. “No, I wasn’t,” she said. And added sheepishly, “I had talked Jake into taking me for a ride in his car that afternoon. He didn’t want to, but you know me … I just kept pushing until he gave in. We just went for a ride and came right back. When I got home, I didn’t have my psych notebook, and I knew it had to be in his car. I figured the police would be returning all that stuff to Jake, and Reed knows what a barracuda I am when it comes to boys. I was afraid if she found that notebook, she’d think the worst. And it wasn’t true. So, I knew I had to get that notebook back.”

“Well, since it’s confession time,” Tobie said quietly, “I might as well tell you, Quinn, that I haven’t been seeing Danny when you thought I was.”

Quinn didn’t admit that she already knew that. If Tobie had decided to talk, she wasn’t going to interrupt.

“I like Danny,” Tobie went on, “but I’m just not ready for another relationship. Not yet. I didn’t think it was fair to be with Danny when I was thinking of Peter the whole time. But I didn’t want to tell you, because I knew you thought it was good for me to get involved with someone.” She looked directly at Quinn. “But I can’t. Not yet. I’m working on it, and I think I’m doing better. The counselor has been a big help. I was with her almost all day yesterday. That’s why you couldn’t find me. She says I’ve got time, that I shouldn’t rush it. And I think she’s right.”

“So do I,” Quinn croaked.

“You do?”

“Sure. It sounds perfectly healthy to me. You’re dealing with your feelings. Ivy didn’t. She twisted them into something angry and ugly and then she turned that against other people. But …” Quinn smiled to take any sting out of her words, “no more secrets, okay?”

Tobie nodded. “No more secrets.”

Quinn’s eyes filled with tears then, thinking of Ivy. “It’s so weird,” she said softly, “in a way, it was a secret that was Ivy’s undoing. The secret of my sleepwalking. But,” she added lightly, “at least I know now I’ve only done it twice since I got to Salem. I thought for a while that I was doing it all the time, but it was just those two times when Tobie brought me back.”

Suze cleared her throat. “Ah, I hate to break this to you, Quinn, but it was three times.”

“Three?”

“Yeah. I brought you back once, too. The night Jake and Reed were attacked in their car. And that time, you weren’t just out in the hall. I found you down in the lobby when I came home from my date that night. I couldn’t believe it. There you were, in your sweats and a pair of white socks, looking like you had no idea where you were.”

Quinn stared at her. “In the lobby? That night?”

“Right. I felt sorry for you, because you had these clean white socks on, and people had been tracking across the tile all night with wet, muddy feet. I knew your socks were going to get filthy. Anyway, I could tell you weren’t awake, so I just turned you around and took you back to bed. You never said a word. When I told Tobie the next day, she explained that you do that sometimes. But I never said anything to you because I didn’t want to embarrass you.”

The socks. The socks that Meg had pointed out when they had all gathered in room 602 after the attack on the car. She really
had
been sleepwalking that night.

“Okay, okay,” Quinn said, relieved to finally know the truth about that night. “Three times, then. But no more than that. And I have a feeling it’s not going to happen again.”

The nurse came in then, and ordered everyone out. “You can come back later, after she’s rested. She needs her sleep.”

Feeling safe, Quinn closed her eyes, certain for the first time in a long while that she wouldn’t be setting one foot outside the bed until she was wide awake again.

She slept.

Diane Hoh (b. 1937) is a bestselling author of young-adult fiction. Born in Warren, Pennsylvania, Hoh grew up with eight siblings and parents who encouraged her love of reading from an early age. After high school, she spent a year at St. Bonaventure University before marrying and raising three children. She and her family moved often, finally settling in Austin, Texas.

Hoh sold two stories to
Young Miss
magazine, but did not attempt anything longer until her children were fully grown. She began her first novel,
Loving That O’Connor Boy
(1985), after seeing an ad in a publishing trade magazine requesting submissions for a line of young-adult fiction. Although the manuscript was initially rejected, Hoh kept writing, and she soon completed her second full-length novel,
Brian’s Girl
(1985). One year later, her publisher reversed course, buying both novels and launching Hoh’s career as a young-adult author.

After contributing novels to two popular series, Cheerleaders and the Girls of Canby Hall, Hoh found great success writing thrillers, beginning with
Funhouse
(1990), a Point Horror novel that became a national bestseller. Following its success, Hoh created the Nightmare Hall series, whose twenty-nine novels chronicle a university plagued by dark secrets. After concluding Nightmare Hall with 1995’s
The Voice in the Mirror
, Hoh wrote
Virus
(1996), which introduced the seven-volume Med Center series, which charts the challenges and mysteries of a hospital in Massachusetts.

In 1998, Hoh had a runaway hit with
Titanic: The Long Night
, a story of two couples—one rich, one poor—and their escape from the doomed ocean liner. That same year, Hoh released
Remembering the Titanic
, which picked up the story one year later. Together, the two were among Hoh’s most popular titles. She continues to live and write in Austin.