The Wish (Nightmare Hall) (2 page)

They ate quickly. Julie and Kyle were driving everyone back to campus, and Julie was nervous about driving in bad weather.

Still, before they left, Marty and Gabe insisted they make one last stop at The Wizard. Alex hung back, watching from a distance.

But before anyone could insert a coin, there was a sharp crack of thunder, so loud everyone in the restaurant gasped and jumped. Simultaneously, the room went white with a visible streak of lightning that came out of nowhere and sped straight across the room to the red metal booth. Those standing closest to it shrieked and flung themselves out of the way, yelping in fear as the arrow of white-hot lightning honed in on The Wizard.

To Alex, watching, the scene seemed surreal: bodies tumbling every which way, the booth radiating white light, startled shouts and cries, a sizzling sound, and then an unmistakable burning smell.

And then, as she cringed in fear against the wall, The Wizard went dark and every light in the restaurant went out.

There were shouts of dismay and cries of fear. A sudden, eerie silence descended upon the room.

And although his image had completely disappeared into the veil of darkness, Alex could still feel the icy blue eyes of The Wizard, watching, watching…

I
N THE BLACK SILENCE
that had overtaken the restaurant, a voice said in a near-whisper, “What was that?”

Marty, picking himself up from the floor, answered, “I think it was lightning.”

“Anyone hurt?” Vinnie called out.

No one seemed to be. But they were all severely shaken.

“Everybody stay cool,” Vinnie called. “Don’t try moving around until the lights come back on.”

An air of nervous excitement filled the room. No one seemed anxious to leave, in spite of the darkness surrounding them. The sharp rat-a-tat-tat sound had ended, but heavy rain continued to pound down upon the roof.

“Bennett,” Marty called, “the four of us were closest to where it struck. You and Kyle okay? What about Gabe?”

“Not a scratch. Never better.”

Alex stood against the wall, watching, listening. They all seemed to be enjoying the excitement. All she wanted to do was get out of there. Fast. It wasn’t the darkness that bothered her as much as what was in it. She couldn’t see The Wizard, but she could feel those eyes. Her earlier resolution about not letting him bother her disappeared.

“Why don’t we just go?” she asked. “The electricity might not come back on tonight, and stumbling around this place in the dark isn’t my idea of a good time. If the lightning only struck here, there’ll be lights on campus.”

She had just finished speaking when the restaurant was flooded with light. A chorus of cheers rang out.

Alex’s eyes were drawn, involuntarily, to the fortune-telling booth. Except for a faint scorch mark on his hat, The Wizard seemed undamaged. No one else close to the booth had been injured, either. The lightning hadn’t been as dangerous as it had looked.

After a moment or two, everyone resumed what they’d been doing when the storm hit.

“Let’s go,” Alex repeated. “Before the lights go out again.”

“Wait!” Kiki cried, “I want to try The Wizard. I’m going to wish I were five pounds thinner.”

But no one had any quarters left, and Alex was already on her way out the door.

Disgruntled, Kiki followed along.

The minute Alex stepped outside, she felt an enormous sense of relief.

The rain had tapered off to a light drizzle, and the night sky overhead was beginning to clear.

Marty, Alex, and Jenny climbed into the backseat of Julie’s car, while Gabe, after failing to persuade Julie to let him drive, climbed in beside her. Bennett and Kiki rode with Kyle in his pickup truck.

Alex was acutely conscious of Marty sitting beside her in the backseat. He was nice, and had a great sense of humor, but she hardly knew him. There hadn’t been time to get to know anyone really well, except her roommates, the twins. They’d been a big help. They were a lot more outgoing than she was, and she was learning from them.

Maybe, if she asked them, they could tell her if Marty was interested in her. Maybe they were better at figuring out things like that than she was. She didn’t have a clue.

Evidence of the brutal storm littered the parking lot. The globes of many of the pole lights had been shattered by hailstones, leaving the area in a dismal semidarkness. Shopping receipts and paper bags clung to windshields, blown there by an angry wind.

“Looks like a war zone,” Marty commented as they drove out of the parking lot. Tree limbs and broken branches and road signs dotted the highway like body parts.

Halfway to campus, they passed Nightingale Hall, an off-campus dorm sitting high on a hillside. An old brick house nearly hidden in shadows cast by huge old oak trees, it had been nicknamed “
Nightmare
Hall” following the tragic death of a female student who lived there. Rumors circulated of strange things happening there. People said it was haunted.

“Now there’s a place I wouldn’t want to spend a stormy night,” Marty said as they passed.

“Well, at least the lights are on,” Alex said. “That should mean we’ll have electricity on campus, too.”

They could see as they passed that at least two of the windows had been blown out of Nightingale Hall, leaving gaping wounds in the structure.

“Wow,” Julie breathed as she steered around debris, “Mother Nature really went on a rampage tonight. I’m glad we were inside, and safe.”

Alex’s immediate, unspoken response was, How safe were we, really? And then she wondered why she’d thought it.

Probably because of the electricity going out. She hated darkness. She didn’t find it romantic or comforting, the way some people did. She had brought a night light with her to college, a pretty, softly glowing crystal hummingbird that plugged into an electrical outlet. The twins had never mentioned it, for which Alex was grateful.

No, she didn’t like being in the dark, not at all. Darkness didn’t seem…kind.

Now, Alex watched the road carefully, peering out over the front seat through the mist-moistened windshield, watching for objects in the road. Julie was talking to Gabe about the new fortune-telling booth, and she occasionally glanced in his direction. Alex didn’t think that was such a hot idea. With all that stuff on the road, Julie should be watching every single second.

“Well,” Julie said, steering carefully around a broken tree limb lying in the highway, “The Wizard didn’t promise to make me beautiful this time, but there’s always a next time. If at first you don’t succeed….”

“I think he’s creepy,” Alex said, not taking her eyes off the highway for a second. “Those eyes give me the chills.”

“Everything gives you the chills,” Jenny said. “You still sleep with a nightlight.”

Alex was caught completely off guard. She couldn’t believe Jenny had revealed to everyone in the car, including Marty, that she was afraid of the dark. Well…not
afraid
of…not really.
Uncomfortable
with, was a better way of putting it. She wasn’t comfortable in total darkness, that was all.

So what? Julie was terrified of spiders, and Kyle was afraid of heights. It was all the same thing. Still, it wasn’t the kind of thing a college freshman wanted to advertise.

Shrugging, Alex returned her attention to the highway stretched out like a long gray ribbon in front of Julie’s headlights. They were closer to campus now, and there seemed to be less debris.

She couldn’t wait to get back to the safety and comfort of their dorm room. Thanks to Jenny’s creativity, Julie’s efficiency, and Alex’s generous stepfather, it was one of the prettiest and nicest rooms in Lester. Alex’s favorite thing in the room was the huge rainbow they’d painted on one of the walls one Saturday, each girl painting a different color: salmon-pink, turquoise, and yellow.

That rainbow was beckoning to her now, calling her back to safety and comfort.

“Almost there,” Julie said cheerfully, turning her head slightly toward the passengers in the backseat. Her attention was away from the road for only a second, but that was a second too long.

Alex saw the tree before anyone else did.

Too late, she screamed a warning.

Julie gasped and slammed on the brakes. In vain.

The car plowed into the upper half of a mammoth old tree lying across the road, a thick black barrier. Its fat, leafless branches reached up and out like grasping hands. Just before impact, one of the branches punched its way through the windshield, showering the car’s interior with glass.

Julie cried out, her hands flying to her face.

Then they hit, hard.

The impact flung the upper part of Julie’s body forward. Her head slammed into the steering wheel, bounced back against the seat, and ricocheted forward a second time. Then she lay still, her arms hanging limply at her sides, her bloodied face resting against the steering wheel.

At the same moment, the front of the car crumpled inward like an accordion, driving twisted metal backward, straight into Gabe’s legs. He screamed just once before passing out, his head flopping loosely against the back of the seat.

The passengers in the backseat were flung forward, too, in spite of their seat belts. Their faces slammed into the back of the front seat and then bounced backward, as Julie’s had.

The car, pinioned by the tree branch in the windshield, skidded sideways just once, and then came to a rest, sideways in the road.

Behind it, Kyle’s truck shrieked to a halt.

N
O ONE IN THE
car moved. No one made a sound. Gabe and Julie were unconscious, and the backseat passengers had been stunned into a frozen silence.

Tiny spots of black and orange whirled around Alex’s head. She shook it, trying to erase the spots. Her ears rang, and she couldn’t remember where she was. What was she doing in this car? Shouldn’t she be home in bed?

Oh. She didn’t live at home anymore. She lived on campus. With twins.

The girl sitting beside her…Alex decided this girl was probably one of the twins…sat up with a groan and called out a name.

Julie. The name she called was Julie. Her sister, Alex thought. Her twin sister. The driver…the girl whose face wasn’t there anymore. Her head was lying on the steering wheel, but her eyes were closed and everything else was all smeared together in a sort of bright red mess.

When the twin in the backseat got no response, her voice rose to a scream.

The boy beside Alex, cursing softly, struggled with his seat belt.

A boy’s face appeared at the front window on the passenger’s side. Alex had no idea who he was. Someone called out, “Kyle! Get us out of here!” So she thought the boy’s name must be Kyle. Did she know someone named Kyle? She couldn’t remember.

The black and orange spots continued to spin, like a constellation, around Alex’s head.

A different face appeared at the driver’s window. Now there were two people on the outside of the car, both struggling to open a door. A girl joined them. She, too, wrestled with the door handles.

Feeling detached, as if none of this had anything to do with her, Alex thought, That girl will get us out. She looks strong enough to open just about anything.

There were three people struggling to get the car doors open. None was having any luck. The doors remained solidly jammed.

“I want
out
of this car right now!” Alex said aloud.

The twin on her right was sobbing.

It was a two-door car, and the half-windows in the back didn’t open at all. When the boy beside Alex finally got free of his seat belt, he got up and pushed past her to attempt to open the front window. But the windows were electric, sealed shut.

His arm brushed against the head of the injured boy in the front seat, and the boy moaned.

Groaning in defeat, the boy who had tried to open the window flopped back into his seat and put his head in his hands. “God,” he said, “is that gasoline I smell?”

Alex pretended she didn’t smell a thing. The girl beside her was already hysterical. What would she do if she thought the car might catch on fire at any second?

But Alex did smell gasoline. Were they all going to be burned alive?

Someone was shouting…one of the boys outside the car had pressed his face against the window and was hollering something. Alex thought his face looked really funny, all smashed against the glass like that, like a pumpkin discarded after Halloween.

“Kiki called the fire department!” she heard.

Who was Kiki?

“The firemen will get you out,” the mouth in the mashed face continued. “Hang in there. They’re bringing an ambulance, too.” Then the mouth added, “Is Jenny okay?”

Jenny? The twin, sobbing hysterically. Jenny was definitely not okay.

The Jenny who was not okay leaned over the front seat and began to shake the driver, trying to awaken her.

Alex snapped out of her fog to grab Jenny’s arm. “Stop that right now!” she cried. “Don’t touch her! She could have a neck injury, or a spinal thing. You’re not ever supposed to move anyone when they’ve been in an accident.”

The words surprised…astonished her. An accident? Is that what was happening? They had had an accident?

How had it happened?

Why had it happened?

Was anyone dead?

“Is anyone dead?” Alex said aloud, and then laughed, because of course if someone were dead, they wouldn’t be answering her, would they?

The boy who had tried to open the window was looking at her funny.

She probably shouldn’t be laughing when they’d just had an accident.

The black and orange spots disappeared. They were immediately replaced by a blinding headache. Alex closed her eyes. The gasoline smell made her stomach churn.

The loud wail of approaching sirens seemed as if it would split her skull in two. But she knew it was a good sound, a sound they’d been waiting for.

It took firemen in yellow slickers, shiny as patent-leather, ten long, agonizing minutes to remove the seriously wounded passengers from the front seat, clearing a path for the three in the back seat to fumble their way to freedom and fresh air.