The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) Read online

  That hope was dashed immediately when he added slyly, “Or the mask could be because of what you said. Could be that you’d recognize me. Who knows? Just hurry up and eat, okay? I’m late already.”

  Tanner chewed hastily. He had places to go, things to do? His absence would be missed? Did that mean he was a student with a busy schedule? Her father treated students. But then, he treated people in Twin Falls, too.

  “If my father did something to you,” she said through a mouthful of sandwich, “why don’t you wait until he comes back and deal with him? Why me?”

  “Don’t talk with your mouth full,” he reprimanded sharply, “or you’ll end up back in The Booth.”

  Tanner submitted, finishing the sandwich in two huge bites. She could barely swallow, there was such a lump of fear in her throat for Jodie. Suppose he decided to check the backyard before he left?

  She was dying of thirst, but was afraid to send him back to the kitchen. The windows in there overlooked the backyard. She would have to wait, get a drink from the tiny sink in the lavatory after he’d gone.

  “I’m outa here,” he said brusquely when she’d finished. “I’m leaving you out of The Booth, but I could come back at any time and check on you. If one single thing is out of place in this room, you’ll be spending the rest of the night in there, and that’s a promise.”

  “I’m just going to go to sleep,” she said, feigning a yawn. “I’m tired.” Maybe if he thought she was sleepy, he’d leave more quickly. Without checking out back.

  Instinctively, before she could stop herself, Tanner’s eyes rose to the screen. There, the rain hat moved behind a bench near the rose garden.

  She felt his eyes on her, and quickly averted her gaze. She shouldn’t have looked. A terrible mistake, after promising herself that she wouldn’t while he was in the room. Had he noticed? Had he seen anything moving on the screen?

  She couldn’t tell. He didn’t seem to be looking at it now. But … God, what a careless fool she was!

  Maybe he hadn’t noticed.

  “I’m not saying when I’ll be back,” he said, taking the empty plate from her hands. “You just better stay where you are, because I could walk in here at any time.”

  “You said you’d get me a blanket,” she reminded him. It was already getting cold in the room.

  “Changed my mind,” he answered callously. “Don’t have time to go hunting for one. Not that cold in here, anyway.”

  “It is too.”

  “No, it’s not. Besides, adversity is good for your character. I’d spoil you by giving you a blanket. Spoiling isn’t good for people. It ruins them. You should learn that life isn’t all cozy warmth. Might as well learn it now.”

  He was quoting again, she was sure. People their age never said adversity was good for character, except as a joke. He wasn’t joking.

  The second he had left the room and the key had clicked in the lock, Tanner jumped up, her eyes flying to the backyard screen. Nothing. She saw nothing but the gardens and the benches and the gazebo and the trees.

  Her heart sank. Had Jodie given up? Gone back to campus without checking out the house?

  No … there, on the other side of the patio, behind the gingko tree, an arm.

  Tanner exhaled. Jodie was still here. And he’d gone. Now, if Jodie could only find a way into the house.

  It was maddening not to be able to hear anything. Not the front door closing, proving that he really had left the house, not Jodie’s voice if she shouted Tanner’s name, nothing.

  She glanced up at the front yard screen. There was nothing there now but the trees, the broken picket fence, and a dark, deserted, rainy Faculty Row.

  When her eyes switched quickly back to the other screen, there was Jodie, hurrying through the rain to the back porch.

  She must have heard Sigmund leave, or she wouldn’t be approaching the house.

  That was reassuring.

  To Tanner’s complete astonishment, when Jodie put her hand on the back doorknob, it turned and the door opened.

  He’d left the back door unlocked?

  Maybe it had never been locked, and he hadn’t ever bothered to check. Knowing how paranoid her father was, Sigmund might have just assumed everything was locked. But Silly would have been in and out of that door a dozen times yesterday, not intending to lock it for the final time until she was ready to leave for the day.

  But she had never left for the day. So the back door had remained unlocked.

  Silly …

  Tanner fought back tears. It was Jodie she should be thinking about now, not Silly.

  Once Jodie was inside the house, Tanner could no longer see her. She didn’t know what to do. Screaming and shouting wouldn’t do any good. But pounding on the door might. Soundproofing wouldn’t silence the sound of fists hammering on wood, would it? If a tree falls in the forest …

  Tanner shook herself. Get a grip! she ordered. This may be your one chance to save yourself from this nightmare.

  She ran to the door with every intention of pounding to attract Jodie’s attention. But both hands were still so bruised and swollen from banging on the front wall earlier that day that the slightest touch on the heavy wooden door sent arrows of pain up her arms, making her feel sick and faint. She couldn’t pass out now, not when help was so close at hand.

  She couldn’t kick the door, either, with her feet lacerated.

  The blows that she finally gave the door were more like pats, gentle slaps, the only pressure she could manage with her hands so sore. Maybe Jodie would somehow, miraculously, hear her tapping.

  She slapped against the door for what seemed like hours. She was about to give up when there was a whispering sound beneath her feet. When she looked down, a small piece of white paper was sliding underneath the door. Gasping, Tanner bent and snatched it off the floor.

  The writing on the notepaper was Jodie’s. It read, simply, Tanner? Are you in there?

  “Oh, God,” Tanner sobbed gratefully, slumping against the door awash with relief. Finally! Finally, someone had found her!

  She was about to be saved.

  Chapter 15

  JODIE WAS AS SURPRISED as Tanner to find the back door unlocked.

  She had been waiting in the backyard, hiding behind a tree, trying to decide what to do, when she heard someone leave the house by the side door next to the driveway. Although she had rushed to that side of the house, she had only seen enough of the figure departing through the dark and the rain to realize that it definitely wasn’t Tanner. And there was something very weird about it, something about the head, but Jodie couldn’t tell what it was exactly. Maybe he was wearing a funny kind of rain hat.

  Jodie was pretty sure of two things. It had looked like a guy, and it wasn’t Tanner’s father. So what was he doing in Tanner’s house? He couldn’t be burglarizing it. He’d have to have a car or van for that, and she didn’t see one. He’d taken off on foot. How much could you steal on foot?

  Jodie’s skin crawled. What was a stranger doing in Tanner’s house?

  There was only one way to find out. She would have to go inside.

  If all the doors were locked, she’d break a window, as Charlie had suggested.

  But all the doors weren’t locked. When Jodie sneaked up onto the porch and turned the doorknob, her mouth fell open with surprise as it turned easily and the door opened. If Tanner really had gone off to the Orient or whatever, she never would have left a door unlocked.

  Jodie pulled the door open and peered inside. Except for a piece of material hanging over the edge of the freezer, nothing looked weird. The back porch and the kitchen were clean, and empty.

  Maybe Tanner was sick. Maybe she was upstairs, so sick that she couldn’t answer the phone or the doorbell, couldn’t even call a doctor. There were probably rare, exotic fevers that did that sometimes. It would be awful if Tanner had been sick all this time and they hadn’t even known it.

  Quietly, the way one does in a silent house, Jodie closed t
he door and moved on into the kitchen, walking cautiously, as if she expected someone to jump out from behind a door at any second.

  There was a small lamp on in the dining room to her right, another in the living room at the front of the house, also on her right, and a light shining from the hall upstairs. Dr. Leo was apparently willing to pay an expensive electricity bill in order to fool burglars, Jodie was grateful. Bad enough creeping around in someone else’s house, without having to do it in the pitch-dark.

  She went upstairs first, hoping as she opened Tanner’s bedroom door that she would find Tanner lying under the covers, maybe with a box of tissues and a bottle of aspirin at her side.

  But the bed, neatly made, was empty.

  Jodie sagged against the doorframe. If Tanner were here, this was where she would be. A serious illness was the only thing that would have kept Tanner from Charlie’s side after the accident, that is, if Tanner were still in the area.

  Clearly, she wasn’t.

  The note hadn’t been a joke.

  At least, now they knew. But, Jodie thought miserably, how am I ever going to break this to Charlie? He was so sure Tanner wouldn’t go off and leave him, not without calling first. He’d be devastated.

  But Tanner wouldn’t have, Jodie heard him saying, and she knew, in spite of evidence to the contrary, that he was right.

  Moving swiftly and surely, Jodie left the doorway to move to the double closet along one wall. She pulled the folding doors open.

  The closet was full. There wasn’t a bare hanger anywhere in sight. The upper shelves were crammed full of heavy sweaters, the carpeted floor littered with shoes.

  Clamping her lips tightly together, Jodie whirled and ran to the triple dresser along the opposite wall.

  The drawers, like the closet, were full. Lingerie, T-shirts, pajamas, sweatsuits, scarves, not a single drawer had so much as a dent in the piles of clothing.

  As if that hadn’t told Jodie the whole story, a framed picture of Charlie, grinning widely, sat on the dresser. Jodie glanced over at the bedside table. Another picture, this one of Charlie and Tanner together, both in shorts and Salem University T-shirts, standing on the riverbank behind school, their arms around each other. Both were smiling.

  Jodie leaned against the dresser. Tanner had said in her note, “See you next fall.” Who packed for months in the Orient or anywhere else for that matter without making a dent in closet or drawers?

  And Tanner would never, never have gone off and left these pictures behind. Not in a million years.

  Jodie turned and ran lightly down the stairs, then stood, perplexed, in the hall. What to do? Call the police? Call Charlie? No, he was in the infirmary. He might have a relapse or something when she told him he’d definitely been right.

  The noise Jodie heard then was so soft, so muted, she wasn’t sure she’d actually heard anything. A faint slapping sound, waves against a shore, someone smacking at a pesky fly, a piece of paper flapping in the wind? Like that. An insignificant sound, nothing that told her anything important.

  But it came again, and then a third time.

  From somewhere off to her left.

  Jodie turned. The music room. The room Tanner hated. Completely soundproofed, one of the reasons Tanner hated it. “It was like the rest of the world had disappeared when I was in there,” she’d said. “I’ve never felt that alone anywhere else.”

  Jodie reached out to try the doorknob. Locked. But the faint slapping sound came again. It was coming from behind the door, she was sure of it.

  Jodie moved closer. If someone screamed or yelled or shouted from inside that room, would they be heard from outside? Did soundproof really mean exactly that? That not a single sound could escape those four walls?

  What about if you were inside? Could someone inside that room hear sounds from the outside?

  Probably not.

  “Tanner?” she said softly, and then, realizing how foolish that was, said it louder. “Tanner?”

  No answer.

  And the slapping sound had stopped.

  Nothing but silence.

  But Jodie was like a dog with a bone now. The closets upstairs, still full, the drawers, still packed with Tanner’s clothes, the photographs of Charlie, had convinced her that Tanner had never left this house. And there had been a sound, no matter how small, from inside the music room.

  She thought deeply for several minutes. Then she turned and ran to the small telephone table in the hall, found a notepad and a pen, and scribbled a hurried message. Just a few words. But if she was right, those few words would be enough.

  Her heart was pounding like a tom-tom as she slid the piece of paper under the door. The threshold was sealed so tightly, she was sure for a second or two that even something as skinny as that piece of paper wouldn’t slide through. But she kept pushing, and finally, it slid free of her hands.

  Then Jodie waited.

  On the other side of the door, Tanner picked up the note and read it. And rejoiced.

  Jodie hadn’t even signed it. But it didn’t matter. The note, brief though it was, was enough. Someone had found her!

  But she was wasting time, reveling in the joy of having been found. She had to answer the note quickly, before Jodie decided the house was empty, after all.

  Tanner ran to her father’s desk. It smelled of lemon oil. But this was not a man who kept piles of letters and magazines and bills scattered across his furniture. There was not a piece of paper anywhere in sight. There was a paisley cup filled with newly sharpened pencils, a matching blotter, a framed photograph of Tanner from tenth grade, a heavy metal ruler, an expensive gold pen in a holder, a brass business card holder boasting a neat stack of crisp white cards bearing Dr. Leo’s name and profession, and a large Scotch tape dispenser. But there was not a single piece of paper.

  Muttering under her breath, “Neat freak, neat freak!” Tanner grasped at the center drawer’s brass handle and gave it a tug. Locked. Of course. They were probably all locked up tighter than a penitentiary.

  They were.

  Gasping in frustration, Tanner’s eyes darted about the room. There had to be a piece of paper somewhere in this room.

  The piano bench. The lid lifted, and underneath that lid there were stacks of sheet music, maybe even some music composition books.

  Tanner ran. Jerked the lid upward. Grabbed the first piece of sheet music she saw. Then she ran back to her father’s desk and yanked the gold pen from its holder to scribble, I’m here! Help! T. across the top.

  Back in front of the door, she threw herself to the floor, lying on her stomach as she pushed the sheet music into the tiny crack beneath the door.

  It didn’t fit.

  Too thick.

  She pushed and pushed, sobbing with frustration, but the top edge of the sheet caught, crumpled, and refused to move. Desperate, she pushed harder, but all that did was crumple the bottom half of the sheet as well, until what she was holding in her hand looked like a used napkin.

  “Oh, God,” Tanner whispered, and scrambled to her feet. All of the sheet music was the same texture, the same thickness. No good, no good …

  The lavatory … the stack of paper towels … would one of those be thin enough?

  “Don’t leave, Jodie,” she whispered frantically, “don’t leave, not yet! I’m coming, I’m coming!”

  She didn’t even feel the pain in her feet as she dashed across the carpet to the lavatory, threw herself inside, clutched a handful of towels to her chest and ran back to the door again, where the gold pen lay waiting.

  Scribbling the same message, whispering, “Don’t leave, Jodie, don’t give up and leave!” Tanner thrust the paper towel under the door.

  It stuck … but just for a moment, and then Tanner sagged in relief as the towel disappeared from sight.

  In the hallway, Jodie, crouched beside the door, stared as the waffled piece of paper edged its way toward her. Grinning with glee, she snatched it up and read it. And shouted for joy, “Tann
er! Tanner, that’s you? You’re in there? Hallelujah! We knew you hadn’t deserted us, we knew it, Charlie and I.”

  Tanner, lying with her ear pressed against the tiny crack at the bottom of the door, heard Jodie’s words. They were faint, but discernible, and they felt like drops of water after a long thirst. Another human voice … not his not Sigmund’s! She felt a rush of warmth for Jodie. It had been very brave of her to come into this house alone.

  “Is Charlie okay?” she whispered into the tiny gap and then realized that Jodie certainly couldn’t hear her if she whispered, so she repeated the question, this time in a shout.

  Jodie had to kneel next to the door to make herself heard. “Yes!” she cried, her lips pressing into the wood. “Yes, he is! How can I get you out of there? Where’s the key?”

  “He has it!”

  “He?” Until then, Jodie hadn’t really thought about how Tanner had become trapped in the music room. But if she had thought about it, she would have assumed it was accidental, an oversight on Tanner’s part somehow.

  The words “he has it” changed the picture completely. It stunned Jodie. She hadn’t thought, hadn’t let herself think, as Charlie had, that something criminal had happened to Tanner. But that figure she’d seen leaving the house … that must be the “he.”

  Why would someone want to keep Tanner a prisoner in this house?

  “Is there another key?” Jodie called out.

  “No, I don’t think so, I don’t know, Jodie, get me out of here! He’s crazy!”

  “Let me look for another key. Hold tight, Tanner, I’ll be right back.” Jodie searched the hallway, checking under the stair treads, over the doorframe, in the brass umbrella stand near the front door. Nothing. No sign of a key.

  She hurried into the kitchen, hunting for a key rack. They had one at home, back in Buffalo, in the shape of a big, fat, black and white cow. Her father had nailed it on the wall next to the refrigerator.

  There was a bulletin board in the kitchen, but no key rack. Jodie went on into the back porch. There could be a key rack by the back door.

  There wasn’t.