The Coffin (Nightmare Hall)

  The Coffin

  Nightmare Hall

  Diane Hoh

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Preview: Deadly Visions

  A Biography of Diane Hoh

  Prologue

  AIR.

  I need air.

  Every time they put me in this dark, narrow, airless space, they insist, as I struggle and scream in fury at them, that there is plenty of air.

  But they lie.

  It is always the same. In only minutes, my chest begins to ache, as if giant claws are squeezing it. My head hurts as my lungs struggle to pull in enough oxygen. I feel dizzy, as if I’ve been spinning in circles for hours.

  But I haven’t been. Because there isn’t enough room in my dark, musty chamber to spin, or even to walk. Not enough room to take two steps forward or two steps backward. No room to lie down, and sitting is almost impossible in this tall, dark, narrow, box, unless you scrunch up your legs so that your knees are jabbing into your stomach like cattle prods. A very painful position, and those times when I’ve been forgotten in here and had been sitting like that, I was totally unable to walk when they finally remembered and came to let me out. My legs had frozen in their folded-up position. They had to reach in and lift me out. I’m not exactly lightweight, and they had a hard time. That made them mad. But it was their fault for forgetting me.

  Dark. It is so completely black, as if I’d suddenly gone blind. There are no windows in my box, not so much as a tiny crack to let in a sliver of light from the hall outside. And it is quiet, deathly quiet. The wood is thick. Only the loudest sounds penetrate, sounding vague and distant, as if my ears were stuffed with cotton. Faint voices, an unrecognizable note or two of music, occasional muffled footsteps. This place is almost soundproof.

  Which makes it as lonely as an isolated mountaintop in Tibet, or the very depths of an ocean, unoccupied by even the bravest of sea creatures.

  The sense of isolation is unbearable.

  But that’s their goal, isn’t it? To make it unbearable.

  They’ve succeeded.

  It stinks in here, too. The smell of human panic is everywhere, oozing from the gray-brown boards. Some of the smell is probably mine, past and present.

  Once … maybe it was the first time they locked me in here … I broke every fingernail, ripped them to shreds, trying to claw my way out. And once … maybe that was the first time, I had no voice left when they finally set me free. Couldn’t talk above a whisper for three days, from the shouting and screaming to be let out.

  Air. I need air.

  I won’t forget this. It won’t be forgiven. Ever. It should never have happened to me. I didn’t deserve it. It wasn’t necessary.

  That’s what I get for trusting.

  Never again. I’ve learned my lesson, here in my dark, silent, torture chamber. Trust is for fools. I will never be that foolish again. Never.

  I won’t always be trapped in this small, airless hellhole. I’ll be free soon. Free to go about my business.

  The business of getting even. Payback time.

  I know exactly how to go about it. I have a plan. A wonderful plan. Thinking about carrying it out has kept me from going insane in this loathsome place.

  But first, I have to get out. I have to be freed from this medieval nightmare. This obscene box.

  This coffin.

  Chapter 1

  THE WOMAN STANDING AT the sink in the bright, sunny, blue and white kitchen was short but sturdy, with a broad, solid back and plump shoulders. Wiry, graying hair fought to escape the confines of a brightly printed yellow and rust bandana that matched both the woman’s cotton dress and her full-length apron. She had made the outfit herself and was very fond of it, even though her best friend, Sunshine Mooney, had said, “My heavens, Mave, in that get-up, you look like a bunch of bananas going bad!” Silver hoops dangled from Mavis’s ears and matching silver bangles dotted her thick wrists as age-spotted hands scrubbed at a teabag stain in the bottom of the white porcelain sink.

  A country song whined from the black portable radio sitting on the blue-tiled counter at Mavis’s elbow. As she scrubbed, she sang along with it, at the top of her lungs, in a nasal, off-key voice.

  A pair of hummingbirds hovered at the feeder outside the wide window above the sink. Every few minutes Mavis, continuing to scrub diligently, would glance up from her task and gaze in wonder at the tiny, busy birds. “Most amazing thing I’ve ever seen,” she would murmur in awe, “no bigger than some insects I’ve seen in my time. But so much prettier. Amazing!” Then she would resume her discordant vocalizing.

  People who had heard Mavis sing said, “Well, Mavis couldn’t carry a tune in a wheelbarrow, but she sure is loud.” This was true, as Mavis herself laughingly admitted.

  But on this particular, beautiful, early-spring morning, the volume at which Mavis sang her favorite country tune would be her undoing. Because her heartfelt caterwauling kept her from hearing the black metal latch on the back door lift upward surreptitiously, making the telltale clanking sound that it always made.

  If Mavis hadn’t been shaking the thick, wooden, kitchen ceiling beams with her voice, she might have heard that telltale clanking sound.

  And she might have been saved.

  But because she was wailing, “You-oo hurt me so-oo bad!” at the top of her lungs, Mavis failed to hear that telltale clank, or the ensuing creak of the metal hinge as the back door swung open, or the soft, whispery footsteps entering from the small, enclosed back porch that housed a freezer, an old wicker chair and table, and a collection of house plants. Her back to the kitchen, she never heard the footsteps crossing the blue and white squares of floor tile and tiptoeing up behind her.

  Lost in the song, Mavis failed to sense a new presence in the room. She was unaware of any approaching danger until it was too late. Cruel and powerful hands encircled her throat from behind, cutting into her windpipe and abruptly ending her song in mid-note.

  The hummingbirds outside the kitchen window went on about their business, unperturbed as Mavis, with strength surprising for her age, struggled valiantly for her life.

  In spite of her surprising strength, she struggled in vain.

  When the last breath of air had been cruelly choked from her body, she gave one last, despairing sigh and went completely limp, like the wet dishrag still clutched in her left hand.

  A voice behind her whispered, “Done! Took long enough. Tough old crow! Now, what am I going to do with you? Can’t have the lady of the house tripping over you when she comes home.”

  Eyes cold with a lack of emotion glanced around the sunny room. The inert corpse in garish rust and yellow sagged to the floor. “Ah, yes,” the whisper said triumphantly, “I see the perfect place. Come along now, like a good girl, time’s a-wastin’.”

  Mavis, who only moments before had been singing at the top of her lungs, made no sound at all as a hand reached down to yank at her gaily printed headscarf and use it to drag the lifeless body across the blue and white floor tiles. Mavis’s left leg slid limply through a small
spill of coffee on one cold square. She had meant to mop the floor the minute she finished the sink and counter. She had thought she had plenty of time, the way people always do when they begin an ordinary day no different from any other.

  But Mavis had been wrong.

  She hadn’t had time, after all.

  The hummingbirds’ wings fluttered without interruption as they continued their morning feast. In the kitchen, a soft, smooth voice on the radio sang seductively about a lovers’ tryst on a stormy summer night.

  But this time, the voice sang alone.

  The off-key but enthusiastic voice of the middle-aged woman who loved bright colors and bangle bracelets and hoop earrings and hummingbirds and who had never in her life deliberately hurt another human being, had been silenced.

  Forever.

  Chapter 2

  “WELL, WHAT I WANT to know,” Sandy Trotter said to Tanner Leo across the table at Vinnie’s, “is when you’re going to have your first party now that your father has abandoned you and taken off for Hawaii, leaving you in that gorgeous house all by your lonesome.”

  Tanner winced at the word “abandoned” and self-consciously ran a hand through her long, wind-blown, dark-brown wavy hair. Leave it to Sandy. Her friends all joked that tall, skinny Sandy had never learned to engage her brain before she put her mouth in motion. Impulsive, always in a rush, a little high-strung, she was constantly sticking her foot in her mouth. She’d just done it again. Sandy knew as well as any of Tanner’s friends that Tanner’s father, the psychiatrist and teacher Dr. Milton Leo, actually had walked out on his wife and daughter when Tanner was eight. Knowing that Tanner was still sensitive about it, no one else mentioned it. Trust Sandy to forget and use the word “abandoned.”

  “Sandy …” Jodie Lawson, Tanner’s best friend, said in a shocked undertone. Jodie, whose real name was Joellen, was small, thin, and plain, with short brown hair and glasses.

  Sandy shrugged. “I repeat, when’s the first big bash? I’ve got a brand-new outfit I’m dying to wear. Tangerine, off-the-shoulder, gorgeous. Come on, Tanner, what are you waiting for? Your father’s been gone over an hour already!”

  Charlie Cochran squeezed Tanner’s hand and said drily, “What are you, Salem’s entertainment director, Sandy? Give Tanner time to catch her breath.”

  Tanner smiled at him gratefully. That was Charlie, her biggest supporter. Always there when she needed him. “Look,” she said, “I’d love to have a party, and I will. But I just took my father to the airport this morning, and it feels like he’s still here. I can almost smell his pipe. Give me a break, okay? Let me get used to the idea that I’m living in that house alone now. Except for Silly, of course. But she’s not there at night. I’ll have the biggest bash you’ve ever seen the minute I can’t feel his eyes on me watching to make sure I’m folding the towels into thirds instead of halves, and placing the couch pillows facing out instead of sideways, and taking the plants into the kitchen to water them so they don’t leave water rings on the hardwood floor in his study.”

  Jodie, relaxing since Tanner hadn’t been offended by Sandy’s insensitive comment, laughed. “It’s hard to believe your father’s a psychiatrist. He’s so utterly compulsive! Maybe you should suggest that he see a good therapist.”

  Everyone laughed, except Tanner. She had given in to her mother’s urgings and come to Twin Falls to live with her father in order to get a free education. Besides seeing private patients in town, her father taught at the college, thus his children, meaning Tanner Melissa Leo, could attend Salem University free of charge. She had had no desire to see her father after all these years, much less live with him, but her mother was adamant. “Free is free,” she’d said crisply, “and he owes us. I’m off to the Orient for a much-needed and well-deserved vacation, and you’re off to Twin Falls, New York, end of conversation.” Then she had added ominously, “He’s not an easy man to live with. But you’re tough. You can take it. And it’s only for four years.”

  Four years!

  Tanner had learned quickly how right her mother was. Her father was a stern, unexpressive man who required great peace and order in his life. But Tanner felt no sense of peace in living with him. He was as different from her easygoing, almost sloppy mother as night from day.

  Her mother, Gwen Reed (she had dropped the Leo two hours after the divorce, saying she was glad to get rid of it, a statement that had hurt her daughter’s feelings, since her last name was still Leo) was fond of take-out Chinese, delivery pizza, paper napkins, loud rock music, and men who called her “Babe” but were kind to Tanner, always. Gwen Reed had a tousle of bright red, naturally curly hair, and wore miniskirts, often in black leather, and thigh-high boots. Her voice was as loud as the printed T-shirts she was fond of wearing. She was noisy, messy, fun, and loving—in a brusque, casual sort of way.

  After five hours in her father’s house, Tanner had trouble imagining her parents ever being together for more than five minutes. Her father wore a suit all day long, even in the evening when he was reading his medical magazines, smoking his pipe, his feet up on a leather hassock at the foot of his recliner, listening to classical music. Rock was expressly forbidden, he made that very clear, his upper lip curling when he said the word “rock.” He did not watch television, ever, not even the news. There was a small set in the kitchen, but only Silly, the housekeeper, turned it on, watching her beloved soaps in the afternoon when the “perfessor” was out of the house.

  Meals in the lovely, ordered house were mostly silent, the cloth napkins folded just so; the tablecloth spotless. At the noisy, haphazard meals in her mother’s house, they used cheap place mats on the scuffed wooden table, if they used anything at all. Tablecloths had to be ironed, and if Gwen Reed owned an iron, she kept it well-hidden. Meals were for talking over the day’s events, arguing, sometimes even shouting at each other, laughing, listening to music played at full volume. Never a dull moment.

  Tanner’s father asked her only about her grades, her achievements in her classes, making it clear from the outset that any grade below an A was unacceptable, and then he ate his dinner. Quietly. Not so much as a slurp, a burp, or a hiccough.

  And since Tanner had little to say to this man who was virtually a stranger to her, she, too, ate silently.

  Their cook and housekeeper, Silly, tried to help, making small, innocuous comments when she brought another dish into the pretty blue and white dining room, asking Tanner if she’d told her father about the date she had coming up on Saturday night, inquiring of Dr. Leo if he’d shared with his daughter the story about “that patient of yours who jumped off the roof of his garage, and it was in all the newspapers?”

  But it was hopeless. Any remarks stimulated by her efforts to help never flowered into actual conversation.

  Tanner liked Silly. She was not only a great cook and a meticulous housekeeper (of course, or she wouldn’t have lasted a day in that house), she was friendly and funny, providing the lightness and warmth Tanner missed desperately. Without Silly, the house would have been unbearable.

  She couldn’t wait for her father to leave for Hawaii and wished he’d stay for the next three years. The thought of living that long with someone who practically went berserk when the trillions of books on the shelves in his library weren’t in alphabetical order according to author made the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

  Now, finally, he was gone. And she had the whole, beautiful house to herself. The first thing she was going to do when she got home was scatter the couch pillows every which way and unfold all of the bathroom towels. Then, if lightning didn’t strike her, she’d know he really was gone, and she’d relax for the first time since she’d arrived at Salem University.

  But she wouldn’t go near the music room. Tanner shuddered. How she hated that room! Maybe she’d lock it the minute she got home, and give Silly the key for safekeeping until her father got back.

  The room was very beautiful. A wide, square space with thick turquoise wall-to-wall ca
rpeting, antique furniture, and a huge stone fireplace. It was filled with half a dozen musical instruments: grand piano, saxophone, violin, cello, trumpet, and a xylophone. Her father played every single one of them, and played them well. Tanner had learned only the violin, a casual admission that had horrified Dr. Leo. “What could your mother have been thinking of?” he had cried, clearly displeased.

  Her mother had been thinking of money, that’s what her mother had been thinking of, and if he’d been a little more generous with child support, maybe they could have afforded other lessons, other instruments.

  Never mind. Tanner wasn’t interested in learning to play any other musical instrument, anyway. He knew how, so why did anyone else need to?

  Besides the musical instruments, which Tanner guessed were the finest made, the shelves along one wall were filled with rare musical manuscripts, carefully wrapped in plastic and clearly labeled.

  It should have been a pretty, pleasant place where Tanner could go to relax. But it wasn’t.

  She wouldn’t go into that room while he was gone. Ever.

  Her father’s parting words to her had been, “Don’t forget to practice. You don’t want to lose your touch. The key to the music room is on the table in the hall.”

  Tanner loved playing in the orchestra at Salem and didn’t want to lose her touch. But she was not going into that room to practice. She never did. Instead, she took her violin up to her lovely, perfectly coordinated bedroom on the second floor and practiced there, knowing it annoyed her father, but not caring.

  Vince Kirk strode up to the table, tall, husky, stubborn jaw, sneakers untied, wearing jeans and a gray Salem sweatshirt with tomato sauce slopped down the front in a jagged “Z.” Smiling lazily to show he didn’t give a fig about the tomato sauce, he slid into the booth, elbowing Jodie aside. “So, your old man’s gone, huh?” he said to Tanner. “I thought the air smelled better on campus.”

  Tanner didn’t take offense. Vince had never made any secret of his feelings toward her father. Dr. Leo had given Vince his first-ever F in Psych 101 first semester, Vince showed no signs of forgiveness.