The Coffin (Nightmare Hall) Page 9

  She knew she must be a horrendous sight. She’d been sweating in that booth, and didn’t have a comb. Her hair was matted on her shoulders. Her eyes felt swollen, her feet were streaked with dried blood. They were beginning to hurt and she knew she should check to see how deep the cuts were, but that seemed like far too much effort. Besides, what could she do about it?

  I want a bath, she thought fiercely, lying on her stomach, her head resting on her arms. The cuckoo came and went again, but Tanner failed to notice. I want a bath and a shampoo and I want clean clothes, maybe a nice, soft pair of jeans and my new red sweater. Charlie’s going to love that sweater. He’s crazy about red.

  Charlie … fresh tears stung Tanner’s eyes. She fought them back. How seriously had Charlie been hurt? Was he even … was he even alive? Oh, yes, yes, Charlie had to be alive, of course he was. Charlie couldn’t be … dead. Not possible. Unbearable, thinking of Charlie not being alive. But what had happened to him that put him on that stretcher, in that ambulance? What?

  If only she’d been in the music room when it happened, she would have seen the whole thing. But she’d been in the kitchen. Or maybe she’d already come back here by then, but had fallen asleep. Either way, she’d hadn’t seen Charlie’s accident.

  Tanner pushed herself up on her elbows. What was it she’d been doing in the kitchen? Why had Sigmund let her out of the music room? She couldn’t remember. Her stomach ached with hunger pangs, so she knew she hadn’t eaten. Then why had they gone to the kitchen in the first place? And why couldn’t she remember leaving the kitchen to come back here?

  Suddenly, she saw the scrap of gaudy, inexpensive fabric covered with flowers in harsh rust and brilliant yellow, waving before her eyes like a flag, teasing, tantalizing, hanging somewhere …

  Hanging where? Where had she seen that flag of fabric?

  Tanner sat up, resting her back against the couch. She remembered the pattern, knew that it was part of an outfit that Silly had made. Why was she thinking of that now? She had barely asked herself the question when the memory returned, flooding back to her, unwelcome as debris brought back in with the tide. She saw it all, in one horrible, vivid image that slammed into Tanner, knocking her backward against the couch, and stealing the breath from her body. She cried out in pain and terror, her hands flying to her mouth, her eyes filled with horror.

  That plump, freckled wrist, laden with inexpensive silver bangles, in the freezer, turning bluish-white …

  Silly hadn’t left early. She hadn’t left the house at all.

  She was still here.

  “Oh, God!” Tanner cried, throwing her head back, covering her eyes with her hands, “oh, God, no, not Silly! He wouldn’t have, he couldn’t have …

  But she knew that he had.

  And as she cried for the loss of Silly, Tanner knew why, when she had been struggling with Sigmund for control of the freezer lid, it had hit her, suddenly and without explanation, that he was capable of killing. She hadn’t seen Silly yet, hadn’t known, but some inner, sixth sense had warned her. Had told her the awful, unbelievable truth.

  Now she believed it, with all her heart and soul.

  He was capable of killing. He had already killed.

  And he was coming back.

  Why, why, why? she screamed silently, and then immediately asked herself if it really mattered why. Did it? Was the reason worth anything? Would it change anything to know why he was doing this? Would it bring Silly back?

  No. But a reason would at least keep it from being totally senseless, like those random shootings she sometimes saw on television. They always seemed so much worse than a crime of passion involving jealousy or revenge, because the killer never had any reason. He had just felt like killing. Wasted lives, just because some crazy got his hands on a gun.

  But this wasn’t that kind of thing, she reminded herself. Because he’d said he knew her father. This was no random attack.

  If his anger was toward her father, it didn’t seem at all fair that Silly and Tanner, and now Charlie, had been caught in the crossfire.

  Tanner swiped at her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. How many more people would be hurt before this horrible nightmare was over? And how, exactly, was it going to end?

  Charlie had been on his way there to look for her when something had happened to him. Did that mean it hadn’t been an accident, after all? Sigmund could have been watching for visitors, and gone out to stop Charlie. Was he going to do that to anyone who came looking for her?

  How was she ever going to get out of there?

  Resting her head against the back of the couch, Tanner thought despondently how quiet and depressing the house was going to seem without Silly in it, belting out her country songs at the top of her lungs.

  Murderer! she thought with fierce rage, clenching and unclenching her hands, digging her nails into her palms until she drew blood. You’re a filthy murderer, Sigmund. Silly never hurt anyone in her entire life. You had no right to kill her. No right, no right …

  Tears of fury were sliding down her cheeks when she heard the key turning in the lock. A moment later, the door flew open.

  Tanner jumped to her feet and faced him, shaking with more rage than fear. She was too angry to be afraid. “You’re insane!” she shouted, raising her clenched fists to wave them in his face. “No wonder you knew my father! You’re probably the craziest patient he’s ever had in his life!”

  In two strides he was at her side, gripping her wrist, twisting it painfully, the rubber mask so close, she could see his bared teeth. They were straight and even and very clean. “Don’t you ever say anything like that to me again!” he hissed, his breath hot on her skin. “You’re a liar, just like your father! I’m not crazy, and I never was. Never, never, never!”

  “Then let me go!” Tanner cried, struggling to free her wrist. “This isn’t sane, what you’re doing, keeping me a prisoner in my own home, building that stupid coffin, putting me in there. If you want to prove that you’re not crazy, stop acting like you are and let me out of here!”

  Dropping her wrist, he stepped away from her, “Oh, I’m afraid I can’t do that,” he said calmly, “Not just yet. Not until Papa Bear knows what’s going on.”

  “My father? I told you, he can’t afford to pay you ransom.”

  “Who said anything about ransom? I don’t need his money. I told you, I just need … satisfaction. I just want him to know that I’m in control here. He said I wasn’t. Wasn’t in control at all, needed someone else to control me, a whole bunch of someone elses. Wrote it down on paper and signed his name.” Sigmund shrugged. “I’m just proving him wrong, that’s all. Showing all of them just exactly how much control I really do have. You’re helping me do it.” He tilted his head. “Isn’t that nice of you? And ironic, don’t you think? That the doctor’s own daughter is helping me prove a point.”

  “All you’re doing,” Tanner said with contempt, rubbing her aching wrist, “is proving that my father was right. Not that he was wrong.” And, she added silently, if you can’t see that, you’re even crazier than my father thought. But she wasn’t about to utter those words out loud. After the way he’d reacted a minute ago, accusing him again would only prove her as foolish as he was insane.

  Humor him, she thought, humor him.

  But she never got the chance.

  Taking his attention away from her, his eyes swept the room.

  Tanner watched in astonishment then as his body tensed and his mouth behind the mask tightened and he began striding back and forth in the area near the grand piano, cursing and shouting. “Look at this mess! What the hell have you been doing in here, young lady? This is disgusting. Glass everywhere, you’ve broken a perfectly good lamp, and these bloodstains will never come out. This beautiful carpet is ruined, just ruined!”

  Tanner couldn’t believe what she was seeing and hearing. This … maniacal creature in a grotesque Halloween mask was marching back and forth in her father’s music room, sounding just
like her father, and looking like him, in spite of the mask. There was a definite resemblance in the way he marched back and forth, shoulders and spine aligned perfectly, like a wooden soldier. Her father did that when some political issue had made him angry. He waved his arms and shouted, just as Sigmund was doing now.

  The resemblance was eerie.

  “This isn’t even your house,” Tanner said indignantly. “What do you care what happens to it?”

  His head came up. He stopped pacing and raced across the room to her. Grabbing her elbow, he screamed into her face, “How dare you speak to me like that? You have no manners, miss! None whatsoever! You need to be taught a lesson.”

  And then, to her horror, he was grasping the neck of her sweatshirt and dragging her straight toward The Booth again.

  “No!” she screamed, struggling, fighting him, kicking out with her bloodied feet. “No, don’t put me in there again, I can’t stand it, please, I’ll behave, I promise, just don’t put me in there!” She hated the pleading in her voice, but she hated even more the thought of that dark, airless space. And once inside, she would have no chance, none at all, of escaping him.

  “This is for your own good,” he said grimly, not easing his grip on her elbow or her sweatshirt. “You must learn your lesson. We have rules around here, and you have to follow them the same as everyone else. One bad apple can spoil the bunch, you know. If we let you get away with things, we’ll have to let others do the same, and then where will we be? Take your punishment like a man, and your character will be the better for it.”

  Later, Tanner would remember those words and realize that they weren’t really his words. He’d been parroting someone else. Someone in authority, someone in control. He was repeating what, sometime, somewhere, had been told to him.

  But for now, all Tanner could do was kick and scream and fight with what little strength she had left, trying to save herself from The Booth.

  In vain.

  She fought valiantly, but she hadn’t eaten anything in too long, and the shock of what had happened to Charlie and Silly had drained her both emotionally and physically. She had so little strength left.

  He, on the other hand, seemed as strong as an ox.

  In a matter of minutes, Tanner was dumped into The Booth like a sack of laundry, the door was slammed shut against her, and she heard the heavy chunk of wood twisting into place.

  “And you’ll stay there until you develop some manners, Miss!” he shouted.

  Tanner sat in a lump on the floor, slumped against the rear wall of The Booth, legs bent at the knee, her hands in her lap, listening for the sound of his departure.

  It didn’t come right away.

  In her darkness, she heard him moving around in the music room, heard him muttering angrily to himself, heard pieces of glass clinking against each other, realized that he was probably cleaning up her mess. Insane … he really was insane.

  She went over, in her head, the words he’d said when he was dragging her to The Booth. And she realized that the words had sounded like something that would be said by the head of a school, maybe a strict private school, or a summer camp or a hospital. Not a regular hospital, where you went to mend broken bones, to have surgery, to cure an illness. Not that kind. The other kind.

  Sigmund knew her father.

  Her father was a doctor.

  A doctor of psychiatry.

  When he sent someone to a hospital, he sent them to the other kind. There were, she knew, residential treatment centers for people their age with mental or emotional problems. She knew because her father sometimes visited them, and often received mail from them. They dealt with behavioral disorders as well as emotional problems, and some might well use a treatment like The Booth for more difficult cases. “Time out,” Sigmund had called it. Yes, that might be something that would be used in the kind of place she was thinking about.

  Was that why he was so angry? Because her father had sent him to one of those places?

  Tanner glanced fearfully around her hated prison. Well, if Sigmund had spent a lot of time in a place just like this one, she almost couldn’t blame him for being angry. Being in this tiny, airless space was enough to drive even the sanest person insane.

  Chapter 14

  THE CUCKOO CLOCK ONLY struck once while Tanner was crouched on the floor of The Booth, but it felt to her as if she’d been in there forever. By the time he let her out, she was thoroughly subdued. All the fight had been drained out of her by her struggle inside that awful box. The struggle was twofold: first, to breathe properly in spite of the lack of air, and second, to hang on to her sanity. The second was by far the more difficult of the two.

  The skylight above her had gone dark. Either night had fallen or the weather had become more severe. Tanner didn’t really care. What difference did it make what was going on outside? She wasn’t a part of it.

  Maybe she never would be again.

  “I’m going to let you out,” Sigmund warned as he held the door to the booth open, “but if you break or even bend one of the rules, you’ll be back in The Booth so fast, you’ll see stars.”

  “I don’t even know what the rules are,” Tanner muttered sullenly. Taking deep breaths of air, she moved quickly away from him to take a seat on the couch. Her feet hurt when she walked, and she knew she should look at them, maybe wash them off in the tiny sink in the lavatory. For now, all she wanted to do was breathe.

  He took a seat opposite her, in the leather chair. Crossed his legs, just like her father did.

  “No more throwing stuff at the windows,” he said. “I’m not cleaning up any more of your messes.”

  Of course he’d figured out how the lamp and candy dish had been broken. He wasn’t stupid. Just crazy.

  “I’m hungry,” Tanner complained in that same, truculent voice. “I haven’t had anything to eat since yesterday at noon. Is that how you intend to get your stupid satisfaction, by starving me to death?”

  “I’m not going to starve you. I’ll get you a sandwich.” He stood up. The ugly mask looked down at her sternly. “I don’t have to lock you in The Booth while I’m gone, do I?”

  She shook her head. “No. I don’t have the energy to do anything brave.” That was the truth.

  Nodding, he left. The key turned in the lock a moment later.

  Tanner let her head rest against the back of the couch. She felt like she’d been swimming through tar. So weak, so tired. How was she going to fight him?

  Her eyes went to the screens high on the walls. Nothing out front, just the gray mist of rain, still falling steadily. She could hear it tap-tapping against the skylight, a rhythm as steady as the ticking of a clock. Her eyes went to the screen monitoring the backyard, and there she saw movement.

  Tanner sat up. A figure, darting in and out among the bushes and trees, there, behind the gazebo!

  She rubbed her eyes. Maybe she’d imagined it. Maybe she wanted so desperately to believe that someone had come to rescue her that she was having hallucinations.

  No, there it was again, stealthily creeping from bush to bush.

  Rain hat, slicker … could be anyone. Charlie? No. Charlie was hurt. Couldn’t be Charlie.

  Light from one of the windows bounced off a pair of eyeglasses.

  Eyeglasses. Jodie? It was Jodie, lurking about out there in the shadows? Jodie had come to see why it was that Tanner Leo wasn’t attending classes, wasn’t at orchestra practice, wasn’t anywhere to be seen on campus?

  So Jodie hadn’t believed the note.

  Tanner’s heart lurched. Charlie hadn’t either, and he had suffered dearly for it!

  Be careful, Jodie, she warned silently, her spine stiffening as her eyes remained focused on the screen. He’s here, Jodie, he’s here, in the kitchen, and if he sees you …

  Jodie would be careful. She was smart, clever. Smarter than any of the rest of them.

  What was Jodie doing out there in the backyard alone? Why weren’t Vince and Philip with her? Where were Sand
y and Sloane? They should never have let Jodie come there alone.

  But then, they couldn’t know that something was very, very wrong in this house, could they? Because Sigmund had put that note on the mailbox. As far as her friends were concerned, she was off in the Orient with her mother.

  Well, Charlie hadn’t bought that. And apparently, Jodie hadn’t either, or she wouldn’t be slinking around in the backyard.

  The key turned in the lock, and Tanner jumped guiltily. She would have to be very, very careful to keep her eyes away from that screen. If he caught her looking up there, he’d see what she was seeing. He’d see Jodie.

  Tanner shuddered. She would not look up at that screen.

  If only there was some way she could warn Jodie.

  But there wasn’t.

  All he brought her was a sandwich, two pieces of bread slapped together with a thin slice of cold meat in the middle. No lettuce, no tomato, no chips, not even any mustard, and nothing to drink.

  But maybe that was better. If she ate very quickly, maybe he’d leave. And Jodie would be safe.

  He thrust the plate at her. “Hurry up!” he demanded, sitting back down in the leather chair. He didn’t glance up at the screen, didn’t even seem aware of it. “I have places to go, things to do. I don’t want to attract attention by not being there. People ask too many questions, that’s one thing I’ve learned.”

  “Are you wearing that disgusting mask because I’d recognize you?” Tanner asked abruptly. “Why else would you wear it? Although,” she added with contempt, “I can’t imagine that someone who’s doing what you’re doing could be someone I actually know.”

  “Maybe I just don’t want you describing me for some clever police artist when all of this is over,” he said.

  Hope sprang to life in Tanner’s chest. That sounded like he wasn’t going to kill her, after all.